Nate Thayer

Nate Thayer Awards and Honors

Thayer’s reporting has earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 British Press Awards 2006 Scoop_of_the_Year British Press Award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft."

He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University 

He was the  recipient of the Center for Public Integrity  International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting oof the Year (http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij  http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij/journalists/profile/856/  "Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted: :"He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of Political faction characters." http://www.publicintegrity.org/assets/pdf/pi_1999_03.pdf Maud S. Beelman, "Reporting Across Borders," The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity,Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.]

According to Vaudine England of the BBC "Many of the regions greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Far Eastern Economic Review from the legendary Richard Hughes of Korean War fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodias Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8268105.stm Vaudine England, "Leading Asian Magazine to Close," BBC Asia-Pacific News, September 22, 2009.]

Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award because he did not want to share it with ABC News  [Nightline] saying publicly lambasting American television news saying:"I in no way want my name associated with such egregious violations of journalistic and professional ethics." .http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/your-scoop-nah-its-ours-if-we-want-it-1157187.html "Your scoop? Nah. Its ours if we want it." The Independent May 25 1998.]

Thayer is also the recipient of The Overseas Press Club of America Award, as well as the Asian Society of Publishers and Editors Award for "Excellence in Reporting,"

Thayer was also honored with the SAIS-Novartis "Award for Excellence in International Reporting."

He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by The Wall Street Jounral

In 1999 Thayer established at the Hofstra Universitys Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication the Nate Thayer Scholarship given annually to "a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need." http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/1999/ho019900008.pdf Hofstra University Student Information Package, Financial Aid Section, p. 45.] http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/SOC/JMSPR/index.html

"Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it" By Paul McCann

Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it

'Ethics' and 'large media organisation' are terms that look less and less comfortable together. Paul McCann profiles a recent conflict involving star foreign reporter Nate Thayer, Pol Pot and America's ABC News

By Paul McCann

The (London) Independent

Monday 25 May 1998

Nate Thayer is the kind of reporter that makes idealistic youngsters want to be journalists. He has risked his life in jungles, crossed the front lines of a civil war, been expelled from his home for exposing corrupt ministers and made secret rendezvous with genocidal killers. All for what is universally acknowledged to be the scoop of the decade - finding Pol Pot.

Now his lustre has been burnished all the brighter by his refusal to kow-tow to the might of the American TV network ABC. Furthermore he has become the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody award because it would have been shared with what he believes is a duplicitous media monster.

When he found the hidden Khmer leader last July, Thayer was described as having spent 10 years on the trail of Pol Pot.

"In fact that is rather a lot of hype," he says. "It's not like I had an obsession with Pol Pot. I was a Cambodian correspondent and lived there for six years. I also lived in Thailand for another five years so obviously there were plenty of other Cambodian and Asian stories that I covered.

"But I had always thought that Pol Pot was one of the last great interviews in the world. Here was a household name the world over who had never explained himself. He was perhaps the most effective 'secret leader' of the twentieth century.

"So all the time I lived in Cambodia and Thailand I kept one eye on Pol Pot. I made numerous trips into the jungle and built up contacts with Khmer Rouge leaders. And I made constant requests for access or an interview with Pol Pot.

"The break came in June 1997 when I was expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between the Prime Minister and heroin traffickers. I decided to write a book so I spent a lot of time just sitting in a room with the Khmer Rouge's clandestine radio station on in the background. I heard then that the defence minister had been deemed a traitor and executed so I immediately went to my Khmer Rouge contacts who told me about serious infighting within the leadership and that Pol Pot had been overthrown.

"They even announced Pot's overthrow on the radio but no one believed them and that became the basis for my argument for getting access. No one would believe he had been overthrown unless a western journalist got in to prove it.

"From there I began the process of getting into one of the most impenetrable places in the world. The only foreigners to have been there before were the three guys who were kidnapped and executed. It was made all the harder because last July a civil war broke out in Phnom Penh and I had to fly to Bangkok and try from there by illegally crossing the border, not to mention the front lines of the Phnom Penh civil war and the front lines of the Khmer Rouge civil war.

"Once me and my cameraman were in a hotel over the border I had to phone a number in Europe to tell them my room number before being infiltrated into the jungle.

Thayer never did actually interview the leader responsible for the deaths of an estimated one million Cambodians. Instead, he filmed two hours of Pol Pot being denounced at a classic Maoist show trial.

Nevertheless, his story was dynamite, and as soon as it became known that he had footage, pictures and a story he was bombarded with hundreds of calls from news organisations. His main priority was to have the print story go in the Far Eastern Economic Review, which he had worked for as a freelancer for years and which had supported him for six months while he tried to get to Pol Pot in the jungle.

But he sold the North American television rights to his footage to ABC for $350,000 - "Mainly because ABC's Ted Koppel is as good as it gets on American TV. He seemed like the last honourable guy."

But now Thayer is seriously pissed off at ABC. The network's PR department got hold of the footage and did a major number on it. They made enhanced video-grabs which they gave to newspapers under an "ABC Exclusive" tag. This meant that, using ABC's released material, the New York Times was able to run Thayer's story before he had even started writing for the Economic Review. And by putting out the video grabs and downloading images onto its Web site, ABC ruined Thayer's chances of selling the stills from his trip into the jungle.

"Basically they said 'f*** you' to my lawyers because they knew their lawyers could eat a freelancer alive," says Thayer. "It was an outrageous ethical violation. They then refused to pay me my agreed fee until I signed something saying that they had done nothing wrong. It took 10 months to get my money and they only paid up because they knew when I had won the Peabody that it would turn into a PR nightmare."

ABC claims that its pre-broadcast publicity was perfectly normal behaviour and Thayer was naive for not understanding this.

Thayer believes the network's behaviour speaks volumes about the state of US television news. "ABC have one correspondent for the whole of Asia so they take freelancers' work and try to take credit for it. The function of people like Koppel is to prove that there is a serious side.

"But in reality to them the function of journalism in a free society is no more than delivering audiences to advertisers."

The Night Pol Pot Died: From the Jungles of Northern Cambodia By Nate Thayer

The Night Pol Pot Died: From the Jungles of Northern Cambodia

By Nate Thayer

(Copyright Nate Thayer. All rights reserved. No publication or transmission in whole or part allowed without express written permission of the author. Excerpts from the unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.”)

I was alone in a hotel the night Pol Pot died, in the small, remote Thai border town of Surin, abutting the Khmer Rouge controlled jungles of Cambodia.

I had been urgently summoned by the Khmer Rouge a few days earlier in a phone call which betrayed no specifics of why they wanted to see me, only that it was urgent. General Khem Nuon, the Khmer Rouge army-chief-of-staff and top field commander for Ta Mok had said only: “What you have been asking for we have agreed to.”

I took that to mean that I had been granted another interview with Pol Pot, but I was to learn it was even more significant. They had decided, as I had been pressing them for months, to turn Pol Pot over to the international community to face a trial.

I was summoned to discuss how to actually handle the logistics of handing over Pol Pot. It was an attempt to play their last card to garner international support and stem metastasizing mutinies and all out warfare raging in their jungles which threatened to finish their organization for the final time.

I had spent several days along the Thai-Cambodian rebel held border discussing their plight and interviewing their top cadre. Earlier that day I had filed a story with my magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review, on the Khmer Rouge decision to hand over Pol Pot. The Review went to press at 6:00 pm Hong Kong time on Wednesdays—this one being that day--the 15^th of April, 1998.

“We have decided to turn Pol Pot over to the Americans. But we can’t get in touch with the Americans. We discussed it again this morning and Ta Mok agreed. So we want to give him to you,” said the guerrilla commander.

I was, to put it mildly, momentarily flummoxed. What the fuck was I supposed to do with Pol Pot? Put him in the back of the pickup truck and take him to the Far Eastern Economic Review office in Bangkok? It was not part of my job description. I suggested they should promptly get in touch with the International Committee of the Red Cross and gave him the appropriate contact details. “That is a very good idea!” Khem Nuon responded. There were other details, but I knew that the decision to turn over one of the century’s most egregious perpetrators of crimes against humanity to face justice was a very good story indeed.

The magazine released the highlights of the story in a press release that night at 5:00 pm Bangkok time—6:00 pm Hong Kong time. It was picked up immediately by the international wire services and broadcast by the VOA at 8:00 pm Thailand time on their Khmer language service, which Pol Pot listened to every evening.

17 minutes after Pol Pot died—at 10:32 pm on 15 April 1998—my mobile phone rang in my hotel room. Reaching past the half-empty bottle of fake Johnny Walker Black whiskey on the bedside table, I grabbed the remote, muted the volume of CNN blaring on the television, and answered the phone.

“My friend, Pol Pot is dead,” said Gen. Khem Nuon, the KR commander and for months my good friend, in an urgent whisper. “He died a few minutes ago.” He was calling on a Chinese military radio phone from the jungles across the Thai border.

While the Khmer Rouge always whispered, they were rarely breathless. Nuon was desperate and looking for guidance. “What should I do?” he pleaded. “You must tell the Americans and you must come here immediately.” It was an example the murky terrain of my role as a journalist and liaison with the rebels in their final days.

As I listened to the Khmer Rouge army commander, Monica Lewinsky splashed across the muted screen of CNN International Headline news, the world news dominated with the criminal punishment and removal from power of the US president for his indiscrete blow job with a young intern, which would continue to tower over the story of the demise of a man who had been one of the century’s most notorious despots.

General Nuon called, mainly, because he knew I would want to know. He was both a killer and my friend. Nuon always tried his best to be helpful. I had spent countless days and nights over the last months with Nuon explaining how the world worked outside the jungles he had called home for thirty years. His appetite for and curiosity for ideas and the new-fangled world was insatiable. It equaled my thirst for knowledge of his movement, its inner workings and history. He had commanded the troops that overthrew Pol Pot the year before, and therefore risen as the top field commander of all Khmer Rouge troops. With his formidable language skills and new role as chief field commander of rebel troops, he was for the first time able to clandestinely leave the jungles he called home and travel for covert meetings in Thailand, where he was escorted by a special unit of Thai military intelligence operatives who closely monitored the routines, movements, and intentions of the outlawed guerrilla faction. Nuon was also receiving medical treatment in Bangkok at a Thai military facility for a cancerous thyroid. He would always come to my house and, over copious amounts of hot tea with lots of sugar, spend hours talking about life and just to be free from the harsh deprivations of the jungle. He had come to rely on me and me on him as we spent countless days and nights sharing thoughts and information. “We will be friends forever!” he would often say to me with a broad, gentle grin, squeezing my hand and hugging me. He was bright, gentle, hard working, kind, and a natural leader of men. He was also the top armed commander of one of the world’s most brutal political movements. He personified the contradictions within the Khmer Rouge movement that allowed them to be such a formidable political force despite their atrocious human rights record. He represented to me the contradictions in my own mind that I had developed for the Khmer Rouge—on one hand respectable and impressive and on the other hand unspeakably brutal and offensive. I was very fond of Nuon and him of me, despite the fact, in truth, I had grown to collectively detest everything that Cambodia had become.

There was symbiosis in my relationship with the Khmer Rouge: They needed me and I needed them and neither of us trusted each other. While competent jungle fighters, these were peasants, mostly rice farmers turned guerrillas, but their ranks were also filled with the best and the brightest of Cambodia who had fled to the jungles as youth 30 years before to join the revolution. Nuon and most others had no exposure to how the world worked outside the jungle, where most had lived there entire adult lives. They had come to largely rely on me to both interpret it for them and take their message to the outside.

After Nuon called with the news of Pol Pot’s death, I knew I wouldn’t have to tell the Americans that Pol Pot was dead. Moments after I hung up, an American intelligence officer charged with following Khmer Rouge developments called from Bangkok. He wanted to know if I had heard “rumours" that Pol Pot was dead. Nuon’s phone was tapped as I assumed mine was and the American spy wasn’t fooling either of us. It was a game whose rules I had long before learned and understood. But he also knew that a monitored phone conversation between a guerrilla commander and a journalist was insufficient to confirm such an historic event. They, as I, needed proof. To be sure this wasn’t some kind of political trick, someone independent and credible needed to go back to the jungle and provide details and evidence of what had happened. The American wanted me to bring Pol Pot’s body back if possible, he said, or some forensic material. “If you can’t do that, maybe you could cut off one of his fingers,” he suggested seriously, in an only fleetingly embarrassed tone. I told him I would do what I could. He needed to get Washington hard evidence of what had happened in these jungles inaccessible to them, and his crude suggestion didn’t faze me at the time at all. He was a top notch military intelligence officer, very bright, spoke fluent Thai, and had excellent relations with the Thai military.

The Americans had political restraints and could not simply show up at Khmer Rouge field headquarters, but I didn’t. I requested he make a phone call to the Thai military to encourage them to let me cross their borders at dawn with direct permission from the highest command, into the Khmer Rouge zones. The American promised to put in an urgent good word to facilitate my crossing through the heavily guarded Thai military checkpoints, through which all unauthorized persons were forbidden to pass. The road to Anlong Veng was a well hidden dirt path set off a remote road that hugged the unpopulated, jungle-clad Thai Cambodian border marked by a steep mountain escarpment. These rutted narrow paths were bordered by a towering jungle canopy and weaved through eerily silent thick tropical forests void of any human presence. It was a no-man’s land for miles after the last Thai checkpoint and before populated areas of the Khmer Rouge controlled jungle bases in Cambodia. The areas between frontlines are always the most dangerous, fraught with vulnerability from roving bandits, landmines, and ambush from a wide potential cast of characters.

While the Khmer Rouge wanted me to come, and Gen. Nuon controlled the troops at his jungle checkpoints, crossing out of Thailand into Khmer Rouge territory required another set of permissions.

A few moments after I hung up with the American spook, the assistant of the Thai army commander-in-chief called. It was close to midnight now. He said I was granted permission personally from the Thai army commander-in-chief, who I had known personally for years since he was a mid level Special Forces commander, to go out of Thailand to find Pol Pot’s body. The general was highly respected for his professionalism and honesty and previously was in charge of Thailand’s important and complicated efforts during the Cambodian covert war. He then headed army intelligence before rising to overall army commander, one of Thailand’s most powerful positions. His aide gave me the name and mobile phone number of the commander of a highly secret Thai military unit who I knew only by reputation. Regiment 16 was based in a remote location along the border and charged with the extremely sensitive task of controlling all access to and liaison with the Khmer Rouge, escorting them on their forbidden trips to Thailand and entering the Khmer Rouge zones with relative free will. Regiment 16 officially didn’t exist and performed functions Thailand officially denied it didn’t engage in. He said the Colonel was already instructed to meet me at a specific gas station at dawn

Neither the Thais or the Americans wanted to be seen as involved in what surely would be an extremely high profile event that would soon, I knew, dominate world headlines and attract scores of journalists to the border area. The Thais had long denied they had direct dealings with the Khmer Rouge, loathed the periodic public fallout from revelations to the contrary, and were under intense international scrutiny and United Nations official directive to not assist them.

My trip across the border from Surin in Thailand to Khmer Rouge zones was not a new scenario. I had made these forays many times before. And both the Thai and American intelligence officers trusted me. I could have burned them all many times over the years, and I never did.

I never revealed how I accessed the guerrilla zones or who assisted me. I knew which secrets to keep and which ones to spill and they appreciated that. One thing I rarely reported was what means and methods of getting to the story I sought or used which might jeopardize a source. The process was usually full of intrigue and would make a good read, but all officials involved operated covertly and therefore were deeply suspicious of journalists. I never betrayed a promise or source from any faction, agency or government.

By the time of Pol Pot’s death in 1998, no governments, even China, who previously appeared unconcerned with international opinion, could be seen as having friendly—or any—relations with the Khmer Rouge.

But everyone knew I still maintained good contacts with the guerrillas, and as a journalist this was wholly legitimate. Beholden to no one, I could hold the mantle of an independent, neutral journalist around my neck, which I defended proudly and without compromise. I had no political problems with associating with international pariahs and murderers. It started as my job. And I rather enjoyed it. Rogue people and states fascinated me. And then it became my obsession.

But the night of Pol Pot’s death, in many ways, marked when that particular episode of my life’s long efforts were finally over. It was midnight now. Pol Pot was dead. I felt numb mainly, but also relieved. I drank straight whiskey from a glass, re-organized my gear to cross the border in a few hours at dawn. I watched Monica Lewinsky play over and over on CNN, flashbulbs sparking, as she fled into a courthouse, to face the full puissance of the American justice system. It did not elude me that it was a twisted reality that the Lewinsky affairs sordid details of superfluous justice was far more newsworthy than that which had been deemed appropriate for pursuit of Pol Pot, who stood accused of crimes against humanity. It was a fact that when he died, 20 years after his regime, which left 1.7 million people dead--1/4 of the population—in 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days in power, Pol Pot had never been charged by any court with any crime anywhere in the world. When he died he was not formally, in the eyes of international law, a wanted man. In fact, it would have been a violation of his rights, sufficient to have any charges dismissed under international law, if he was captured and held against his will anywhere outside of Cambodia.

I knew that soon Pol Pot would be featured, perhaps not eclipsing but along with Monica, in the world press. It would leak to be a world story within hours. Once leaked, scores of journalists would descend on this Thai border town. I wanted to get in and out of the jungle before the circus began…..

To be continued….

(Copyright Nate Thayer. All rights reserved. No publication or transmission in whole or part allowed without express written permission of the author. Excerpts from the unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s Memoir From Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.”)

End of Story?: Last Khmer Rouge defections don't bring closure - yet By Nate Thayer in Bangkok

End of Story?: Last Khmer Rouge defections don't bring closure -  yet

By Nate Thayer in Bangkok

Far Eastern Economic Review

December 17, 1998

After 28 years and more than 2 million dead, the war in Cambodia ended on December 4. That was the day the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge agreed to lay down their guns and accept the authority of the government in Phnom Penh.

   Conspicuously absent from the deal, however, were the names of the
three most senior Khmer Rouge leaders: military supremo Ta Mok, political
leader Khieu Samphan, and former party No. 2 Nuon Chea. International investigators want to see all three indicted for crimes against humanity for their role in the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975-79 rule over Cambodia.

  The REVIEW has learned that Thai authorities are detaining all three at the request of the United States. Thai and Khmer Rouge sources say U.S. officials have requested that Thailand hold the trio until an international tribunal is created to try the architects of Cambodia's "killing fields."

     Senior Khmer Rouge and government military commanders negotiated the Khmer Rouge defection in a series of secret meetings at the temple ruins of Preah Vihear, in the remote northern jungles near the Thai border, Khmer Rouge Gen. Khem Nuon told the REVIEW on December 4. Phnom Penh confirmed the agreement the next day.

     The guerilla military commanders, who defected with as many as 5,000 soldiers and up to 30,000 civilians from the Thai-Cambodian border, will be integrated into the government and armed forces, according to Nuon and Cambodian government officials. In exchange, the guerillas have vowed to lay down their arms, don the government uniforms, and recognize the new government and constitution. They will in effect be given an
autonomous zone where the central government wields little influence.

     The decision follows two years of steady defections from the Khmer Rouge, who have been weakened by bloody infighting, a halt to foreign assistance, low morale and the evaporation of popular support. Though Khmer Rouge leaders say they still oppose Hun Sen's government, they have recognized the futility of further armed struggle. "We all agree to join the government. We are tired of war. We will fight politically for the peasants
from now on," says Khem Nuon.

     Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea - the top three Khmer Rouge leaders following the April death of Pol Pot - were not among the defectors. According to Nuon, they are "retired and play no role."

A source close to the guerilla leaders says Thai authorities are holding the three, separately, in Sisaket province near the Cambodian border. "They are in a bad position," the source says. Thai and Khmer Rouge officials add that U.S. officials, who want to see the three tried for crimes against humanity, asked that they be detained. (U.S. officials refused to comment, and the Thai government denied that the Khmer Rouge leaders were on Thai soil.)

     There's no guarantee that they will be brought to trial, however. Both guerilla and government sources say they expect that Khieu Samphan,  a former Khmer Rouge diplomat who has at times been the public face of the movement, is likely to be granted amnesty by the Cambodian government in coming months.

     Even more significantly, an appropriate international tribunal has yet to be created, and doing so may be difficult. Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that such a tribunal should be held in Cambodian territory and controlled by Cambodian authorities. The major democracies, which want to maintain a policy of engagement with Hun Sen, may be reluctant to confront him on the issue. "The U.S. wants to influence and guide the leader, not alienate him," says a U.S. diplomat.

     However, the United Nations sent foreign experts to Cambodia in November to assess the prospect for creating an effective tribunal -  and they are not likely to be so diplomatic. They say Hun Sen's proposal would be unacceptable, as any tribunal would have to be controlled by an independent judicial process, like the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague for the former Yugoslavia. "We will not be party to a judicial farce," says a foreign expert close to the UN team.

     Hun Sen's reluctance to see the creation of an independent tribunal is understandable. He is a former Khmer Rouge commander, and his government is filled with former Khmer Rouge; some defected when he did, in 1977, and others defected in recent years. They include the ministers of defence, interior, justice, finance and foreign affairs, as well as hundreds of officers in the military, security service and civilian administration.

     Among the most notorious is Keo Pok, a former senior Khmer Rouge cadre who became a government official after defecting in March. In charge of purges in the 1970s that killed at least tens of thousands, his role is detailed in documents captured from Tuol Sleng, where the Khmer Rouge tortured and executed more than 16,000 people.

    Mam Nay, another defector, served as chief interrogator at Tuol Sleng and is implicated in the murder of thousands. His signature is on scores of documents detailing the torture and killing of political opponents. He currently grows corn in western Cambodia.

     The demise of the Khmer Rouge began in earnest in July 1996, when thousands rebelled against Pol Pot and other leaders who wanted to return to open warfare against the government formed after the UN-sponsored 1993 elections. The government backed the rebellion, led by Ieng Sary and senior field commanders. Pol Pot and other leaders holed up in the northern jungles deemed the Khmer Rouge rebels traitors and "worse
than excrement." "We want to make one thing clear. We will never
surrender," one senior cadre, Mak Ben, told the REVIEW at the time. "As long as there is grass, we can eat the grass." He defected to the government in July 1997.

     In June 1997, Pol Pot's paranoia about traitors from within peaked. He ordered the assassination of his long-time comrade and defence minister, Son Sen, brutally murdering 16 of his family members in the process. Also targeted was Ta Mok, the one-legged military commander known as "the butcher," who escaped, mustered his troops and overthrew Pol Pot.

     But under Ta Mok's leadership, little improved. By March 1998 he was losing many of his troops to mass defections. An offensive by former loyalists then forced Pol Pot, Ta Mok and thousands of troops and civilians to retreat to the jungles near the Thai border.

     On April 15, Pol Pot died - of a "broken heart," his wife told the REVIEW -  and a livid Ta Mok continued to demand all-out warfare against defectors. "They are traitors who will all die," he said. Ta Mok's interpreter that day was Tep Kunnal, a senior political official and former UN diplomat. During the interview, he turned and whispered grimly: "This movement is finished."

     Later, as he plotted his own escape, Tep Kunnal sent a letter that revealed the bizarre idealism of a movement responsible for one of history's worst mass murders. "How great our sorrow is when we lose someone that we nourish and love dearly," Kunnal wrote. "But here it is not only the loss of someone's life, but the life of a movement that involves hundreds of thousands of human lives that have perished. You can imagine our grief." [End]

The Resurrected: The Khmer Rouge Haven't Disappeared-They're in Power By Nate Thayer

The Resurrected: The Khmer Rouge Haven't Disappeared-They're in Power

By Nate Thayer

Far Eastern Economic Review

Bangkok, April 16, 1998

It was a crime that earned Cambodia's ousted prime minister a 30-year prison sentence. "Norodom Ranariddh negotiated with the Khmer Rouge," the Phnom Penh military court judge intoned on March 18, at the end of a trial orchestrated by his rival co-premier, Hun Sen. But on the day Prince Ranariddh was convicted, Hun Sen's men were holding secret talks with the same Khmer Rouge rebels--cutting a deal remarkably similar to the one for which Ranariddh was being condemned. As a result of the negotiations, hundreds of Khmer Rouge guerrillas emerged from the northern Cambodian jungle the following week, armed with amnesty from prosecution, money and ranking positions in Hun Sen's government. Similar scenes have been repeated all over the country since 1996, when the Khmer Rouge--the ruthless organizers of the 1975-78 reign of  terror that left more than 1 million Cambodians dead--began fragmenting through infighting and defections. Instead of being brought to justice before an international tribunal, some of the movement's top commanders have gained senior positions in the government and security forces, while the Khmer Rouge rank and file have been quietly reintegrated into Cambodian society by the thousands. They are the beneficiaries of the bitter rivalry between Hun Sen and Ranariddh, whose political factions are vying for the allegiance of the guerrillas to strengthen their troop numbers. It's a raw power play that makes Hun Sen's condemnation of Ranariddh's negotiations ring hollow: Hun Sen justified his July 1997 coup by charging that Ranariddh was conspiring with the Khmer Rouge to overthrow the government.

Hun Sen's embrace of longtime Khmer Rouge cadres also undermines the premise of the international community's tacit backing for the Cambodian strongman, which is rooted in the pragmatic belief that his regime is a bulwark against the return of the murderous faction. Preventing the guerrillas from returning to power has been a goal of major Western countries ever since the Khmer Rouge government was overthrown in 1979 by the Vietnamese, who installed a puppet regime of Khmer Rouge defectors in Phnom Penh. After the Vietnamese army pulled out in 1989, this regime remained under Prime Minister Hun Sen. He and his Cambodian People's Party strong-armed their way into an uneasy coalition with Ranariddh's Funcinpec party after contesting elections sponsored by the United Nations in 1993. The factor that has persuaded foreign governments to back Hun Sen and the CPP is the party's control over Cambodia's administrative apparatus, which gave it credibility as the only force capable of blocking a Khmer Rouge comeback. Far from suppressing the Khmer Rouge, however, Hun Sen has courted the rebels as fervently as he accused Ranariddh of doing. He has appointed their leaders to his government despite overwhelming evidence that many of them were involved in torture and murder in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. In late March, for instance, Hun Sen greeted several thousand Khmer Rouge troops in the latest mass defection. Declaring that he "warmly, movingly and joyfully" welcomed these "compatriot officers," he promised that they would be "inducted into the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, the national police, the military police and the civilian administration."The leader of the breakaway faction, Keo Pok, told journalists: "We all oppose and separate from the control and leadership of the murderous hard-liners . . . and would like to return to live with the Royal government." Pok's own murderous past as a long-time member of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee was forgotten. Indeed, the Cambodian government continued its public condemnation of the rebels without missing a beat. Less than a week later, the government appealed to the Friends of Cambodia--an informal group of countries including the United States, Japan, France and Australia--to bring "the Khmer Rouge to trial for crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity." The U.S. has given more than $1 million to finance the gathering of evidence for an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge for such crimes. But in reality, Washington and other "friends of Cambodia" have turned a blind eye to the fact that thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres--many of them suspected mass-murderers--have been brought back into the corridors of power. On April 6, a State Department spokesman told the REVIEW: "The United States has supported the reintegration into Cambodian society of Khmer Rouge defectors . . . Many former members of the Khmer Rouge, including some in Cambodia's current leadership, have renounced that organization's murderous policies." Former Khmer Rouge cadres now in the government include Hun Sen himself, the defence minister, the interior minister, the finance minister, the head of the national assembly, and thousands of others in the provincial and local administrations. Some had been targets of  the Khmer Rouge's 1978 purges and fled to neighbouring Vietnam. After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, they returned to Phnom Penh to be installed as the new government. But many have joined the government only in the past two years. The Khmer Rouge began disintegrating in earnest in August 1996, when almost half its forces in western Cambodia made a deal with the government. The rebels were enticed by promises that they would be allowed to keep their territory, exploit its rich timber and mineral resources, and hold senior posts in the government and armed forces. These areas are now autonomous zones controlled by the same Khmer Rouge figures who administered them before defecting. They and other Khmer Rouge commanders now hold government office despite abundant evidence that they were guilty of committing atrocities during the movement's three years in power.

Some examples:

-  Keo Pok, the 68-year-old senior cadre who led the mass defection in late March, played a leading role in some of the Khmer Rouge's worst killing sprees. His role is detailed in captured Khmer Rouge documents being compiled by Yale University. According to documents taken from Khmer Rouge torture and execution centres, Pok was involved in the execution of people associated with the Lon Nol government, which was toppled by the Khmer Rouge in1975. In the same year, he led the massacre of thousands of Cham Muslims in eastern Cambodia, the documents show. As head of the northern zone in 1977, he supervised the rounding up of "internal enemies, "including at least 112 civilians who were later killed, according to documents from the Tuol Sleng torture centre, known as S-21, that are cited by Cambodia historian Ben Kiernan and other scholars. "Pok's fingerprints are all over the S-21 archives," says Cambodia scholar Stephen Heder at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. "The evidence is indisputable." Later in 1977, he took charge of the central zone, ordering the local leaders tortured and killed. Pok's worst atrocities came in 1978, when he led massacres in the eastern zone along the Vietnamese border in which tens of thousands of people were killed and hundreds of  thousands forcibly relocated, according to documents left at Tuol Sleng by the Khmer Rouge after they fled the 1979 Vietnamese invasion. "The guy who was in charge of the killing was Pok," says Heder, who has analyzed the documents.

nIeng Sary, the Khmer Rouge's former foreign minister, now controls an autonomous zone in western Cambodia. He broke from Pol Pot in August 1996, and the following year held a press conference in Phnom Penh to publicly pledge loyalty to Hun Sen. Shortly afterwards, he was given the rights to sell 178,000 cubic metres of logs from the timber-rich zone, worth an estimated $75 million. His lucrative deals were signed by Hun Sen on January 7 and 11 this year, according to copies of the official contracts obtained by the REVIEW.

n-- Mam Nay, another notorious Khmer Rouge figure, lives near Ieng Sary and now grows corn for a living, according to Cambodian military sources and human-rights investigators. Mam Nay was chief interrogator at the Tuol Sleng torture centre, where 16,000 people, including women and children, were put to death. His signature is on scores of documents detailing the torture of political opponents. He is implicated in "hands-on torture and execution and would almost certainly be convicted in any international tribunal," says Heder of  London University. Cambodian authorities know where he lives, but have made no attempt to detain him.

n-- Pech Chheang, a long-time ally of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, defected to the government in late March along with his Khmer Rouge troops. Gen. Chheang and his troops are now fighting remnants of the Khmer Rouge in northern Cambodia. Chheang was the Khmer Rouge government's ambassador to Beijing from 1975 to 1984. In 1994, Khmer Rouge radio named him as the movement's defence minister.

n-- Nuon Paet also was made a general in the Cambodian army after he defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1996. He is a convicted murderer. He was found guilty in a Cambodian court for killing three Western tourists who were kidnapped and held hostage for six weeks in 1994.

-  Sam Bith was Nuon Paet's commander at the time of the Westerners' murder. He switched allegiance last August, denouncing his former Khmer Rouge comrades at a Phnom Penh press conference. He is now a two-star general in the government army. Bith was the commander of Khmer Rouge troops who invaded Ha Tien in Vietnam in 1978, according to Heder and other scholars. Those troops slaughtered thousands of  Vietnamese women and children during the cross-border raids, which provoked Vietnam's subsequent invasion of  Cambodia.  Bith was one of nine younger leaders chosen by Pol Pot in 1985 to be groomed to take over the Khmer Rouge. Of those, six have joined Hun Sen since 1996 and now hold senior ranks in the Cambodian army. Since then, most of at least 15 Khmer Rouge army divisions have joined Hun Sen after offers of amnesty, money and government positions. The defections have left the guerrilla movement with a demoralized rump of a few thousand still fighting the government in the jungles in the north. The bulk of the Khmer Rouge are now members of Cambodia's government. That raises the question of who is to be defined as Khmer Rouge and who can be brought before an international tribunal if it were ever to be held.

Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created-By Nate Thayer

Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created

------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Nate Thayer in Preah Vihear province

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Far Eastern Economic Review
April 30, 1998

As Pol Pot's body lies bloating 100 metres away in a spartan shack, exhausted Khmer Rouge leaders gather in a jungle-shrouded ammunition depot filled with home-made mines and crude communications equipment. Explosions of heavy artillery and exchanges of automatic-weapons fire echo in the mountains as the Khmer Rouge's remaining guerrillas hold off government troops.

Ta Mok, the movement's strongman, vows to fight on, and blames his longtime comrade-in-arms for the Khmer Rouge's desperate plight. "It is good that Pol Pot is dead. I feel no sorrow," he says. Then he levels a bizarre accusation against the rabidly nationalistic mass murderer: "Pol Pot was a Vietnamese agent. I have the documents."

A young Khmer Rouge fighter, his leaders only metres away, leans close to a visiting reporter and whispers in Khmer: "This movement is finished. Can you get me to America?"

Besieged in dense jungles along the Thai border, the remnants of the Khmer
Rouge are battling for survival in the wake of three weeks of chaotic
defections and the loss of their northern stronghold of Anlong Veng. Having
lost faith in the harsh leadership of Ta Mok, several commanders are
negotiating to defect to the guerrilla forces loyal to deposed Prime Minister
Norodom Ranariddh.

Ta Mok's growing paranoia and isolation were only some of the revelations to
come out of an exclusive tour of shrinking Khmer Rouge-held territory north of
Anlong Veng the day after Pol Pot's death. Khmer Rouge cadres and Pol Pot's
wife recounted the last, ignominious days of his life, as he was moved through
the jungle to escape advancing troops.

There was no visible evidence that the former Cambodian dictator was murdered.
Cadres say he died of a heart attack on the night of April 15. In the days
after his death, Khmer Rouge envoys held secret peace talks in Bangkok with
Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh, and had their first direct contact with
U.S. officials in more than two decades. Yet at the same time, Khmer Rouge
holdouts were joining up with Ranariddh's rebel forces, making it likely that
the insurgency will continue as Cambodia prepares for crucial elections in
July.

The Khmer Rouge weren't trying to expose their shaky future when they allowed a REVIEW reporter to enter their territory, but to prove to the world that the architect of Cambodia's killing fields was indeed dead. Leading the way to Pol Pot's house to display the ultimate proof, a cadre warns against stepping off the path. "Be careful, there are mines everywhere."

The sickly-sweet stench of death fills the wooden hut. Fourteen hours have
passed since Pol Pot's demise, and his body is decomposing in the tropical
heat. His face and fingers are covered with purple blotches.

Khmer Rouge leaders insist that Pol Pot, aged 73, died of natural causes.
Already visibly ill and professing to be near death when interviewed by the
REVIEW in October, he had been weakened by a shortage of food and the strain of
being moved around to escape the government offensive. "Pol Pot died of heart
failure," Ta Mok says. "I did not kill him."

That night, Ta Mok had wanted to move Pol Pot to another house for security
reasons. "He was sitting in his chair waiting for the car to come. But he felt
tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His
wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him he
had passed away already. It was at 10:15 last night."

There are no signs of foul play, but Pol Pot has a pained expression on his
face, as if he did not die peacefully. One eye is shut and the other half open.
Cotton balls are stuffed up his nostrils to prevent leakage of body fluids. By
his body lie his rattan fan, blue-and-red peasant scarf, bamboo cane and white
plastic sandals. His books and other possessions have been confiscated since he
was ousted by his comrades in an internal power struggle 10 months earlier. Two vases of purple bougainvillea stand at the head of the bed. Otherwise, the room is empty, save for a small short-wave radio.

Pol Pot listened religiously to Voice of America broadcasts on that radio, but
the April 15 news on the Khmer-language service may have been too much to bear. The lead story was the REVIEW's report that Khmer Rouge leaders--desperate for food, medicine and international support--had decided to turn him over to an international tribunal to face trial for crimes against humanity. "He listened to VOA every night, and VOA on Wednesday reported your story at 8 p.m. that he would be turned over to an international court," says Gen. Khem Nuon, the Khmer Rouge army chief-of-staff. "We thought the shock of him hearing this on VOA might have killed him."

A week earlier, Nuon had said that Pol Pot knew of the decision, but now he
says the ageing leader had not been fully informed. "We decided clearly to send
him" to an international court, says Nuon, "but we only told him that we were
in a very difficult situation and perhaps it was better that he go abroad.
Tears came to his eyes when I told him that."

Perched nervously by the deathbed is Pol Pot's wife, a 40-year-old former
ammunition porter for the Khmer Rouge named Muon. Clutching her hand is their 12-year-old daughter, Mul. A peasant woman, Muon says she has never laid eyes on a Westerner before. She corroborates Ta Mok's account of Pol Pot's death. "Last night, he said he felt dizzy. I asked him to lie down. I heard him make a noise. When I went to touch him, he had died."

Pol Pot married her after his first wife went insane in the 1980s as the Khmer
Rouge tried to survive in the jungle after their reign of terror was ended by
invading Vietnamese troops. Muon seems oblivious to her husband's bloodstained past, caught only in the anguish of the present.

"He told me a few weeks ago: 'My father died at 73. I am 73 now. My time is not far away,'" she says. "It was a way of telling me that he was preparing to
die." Reaching down to caress his face, she bursts into tears. "He was always a
good husband. He tried his best to educate the children not to be traitors.
Since I married him in 1985, I never saw him do a bad thing."

Asked about his reputation as a mass-murderer, her lips quiver and she casts a
terrified glance at senior Khmer Rouge cadres hovering nearby. "I know nothing about politics," she says. "It is up to history to judge. That is all I want to say."

She has reason to be terrified. "As to what I will do with his family, I
haven't decided," says Ta Mok. "If I let them go, will they say anything bad
about me? Maybe they might be used by Hun Sen," he says, referring to his
nemesis, the Cambodian premier.

Outside the front door is a small vegetable garden tended by Pol Pot's wife and
daughter; next to it, a freshly dug trench where Pol Pot and his family were
forced to cower as artillery bombarded the jungle redoubt in recent weeks.

Pol Pot's last days were spent in flight and fear of capture--a humiliating end
for the man who ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. According to his wife and
Khmer Rouge leaders, he dyed his hair black on April 10 in a desperate attempt
to avoid capture by mutinying Khmer Rouge troops as he fled to the Dongrek
mountains north of Anlong Veng. "Pol Pot feared that he could be caught. By
dying his hair he was trying to disguise himself. For such a person to do that,
it showed real fear in his mind," says Gen. Nuon.

The guerrillas had been unable to provide their ousted leader with sufficient
food since being forced from their headquarters in late March. "For the last
few weeks he had diarrhoea and we haven't had much food because of the fighting with the traitors," recounts Ta Mok.

As Pol Pot fled, the remnants of the movement he created 38 years ago crumbled before his eyes. A few days before his death, he was being driven with his wife and daughter to a new hideout by Gen. Non Nou, his personal guard. From his blue Toyota Land Cruiser, Pol Pot saw Khmer Rouge civilians--cadres say around 30,000--who had been forced from their fields and villages by government troops and Khmer Rouge defectors.

"When he saw the peasants and our cadres lying by the side of the road with no
food or shelter, he broke down into tears," says Non Nou. His wife echoes the
account, and quotes Pol Pot as saying: "My only wish is that Cambodians stay
united so that Vietnam will not swallow our country." Pol Pot never expressed
any regrets, she says. "What I would like the world to know was that he was a
good man, a patriot, a good father."

Asked how she wanted her father remembered, Pol Pot's only child stands with
her head bowed, eyes downcast and filled with tears. "Now my daughter is not
able to say anything," interjects Muon. "I think she will let history judge her
father."

History will have to, because death has deprived the world of the chance to
judge the man responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million people.

Although Pol Pot has cheated justice, other leaders of that regime remain at
large, including Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, who are sheltering with Ta Mok. Others, such as Keo Pok, Mam Nay and Pol Pot's former brother-in-law, Ieng Sary, have defected with their troops to the government side since 1996.

Although Pol Pot's life will stand as the darkest chapter in Cambodian history,
his death is likely to be just a historical footnote. What's more likely to
affect Cambodia's future is the continuing disintegration of the Khmer Rouge.
This is prompting desperate attempts by what's left of the movement to find
security.

The day after Pol Pot died, senior Khmer Rouge officials travelled to Bangkok,
where they held secret negotiations with Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh.
There, they offered for the first time to cooperate with elements of the
Cambodian government. "Yes, we are prepared to negotiate. We are in the
process," says Ta Mok. "But I am not going to be a running dog of Vietnam like
Ieng Sary. In a nutshell, we want to dissolve the Hun Sen government and
establish a national government that includes all national forces."

Interviewed on April 18, one of the chief Khmer Rouge negotiators, Cor Bun
Heng, said of the unprecedented meeting: "It was a good beginning and cordial.
But these things take time." Added the other senior negotiator, Gen. Nuon: "We
believe that the only way out is national reconciliation between all the
parties. We know that the entire Cambodian population wants peace."

What's more, Nuon and Cor Bun Heng said they met secretly on April 17 with
American officials in Bangkok, and laid out their demands for a political
settlement. It was the first official, direct contact between the United States
and the Khmer Rouge for at least two decades. U.S. officials wouldn't comment.

In the jungles, Ta Mok knows that his capture and trial is sought by the
international community. He wants to use Pol Pot's death to wipe the slate
clean. "The world community should stop talking about this now that Pol Pot is dead. It was all Pol Pot. He annihilated many good cadres and destroyed our movement. I hope he suffers after death," he says. He then asks a visiting
reporter to get hold of a satellite telephone for him, sketching a collapsible
phone he has seen. "I want a good telephone. One that I can call anywhere in
the world."

But working the phone will not prevent Ta Mok from rapidly losing the loyalty
of his own commanders. Privately, many of his top officers and cadres hold him responsible for the collapse of the movement since he seized control from Pol Pot last July. "He is very tired," says a senior Khmer Rouge official. "No man can shoulder all the political, diplomatic and military burdens by himself." Others are less kind. "He has no more support from many of his own people," whispers one cadre. "But we don't know where to go. Cambodia has no good leaders."

Fear was in the faces of many leaders and cadres still holed up near the Thai
border--and for good reason. "There may be more traitors, it is normal. But in
the end they will all die," Ta Mok says. He's a man of his word: Three top
commanders arrested with Pol Pot last year were executed in late March because some of the fighters who mutinied were loyal to them. "It was a decision made by the people," Ta Mok shrugs.

He gives the impression of being increasingly out of touch with reality, seeing
enemies everywhere and unwilling to compromise. His brutal tactics are also a
source of unease among his remaining loyalists. "Our movement will only get
stronger. We have sent our forces close to Phnom Penh and they have carried out
their tasks successfully," he says. The "task" he boasts of was the recent
massacre of 22 ethnic Vietnamese, including women and children, in a fishing
village in Kompong Chhnang province.

The REVIEW has learned that many of the estimated 1,600 guerrillas still
nominally under Ta Mok's command have pledged allegiance to the forces loyal to
Ranariddh's Funcinpec party, who occupy nearby jungles. Cadres say that in
negotiations with Funcinpec's Gen. Nyek Bun Chhay, they have pledged loyalty to
Ranariddh's party and agreed to force Ta Mok into "retirement."

Scores of uniformed Funcinpec troops, including senior commanders, are fighting
alongside Ta Mok loyalists north of Anlong Veng. Gen. Meas Sarin, a Funcinpec
commander and governor of Preah Vihear province before Hun Sen's coup in July,
is present at Khmer Rouge headquarters. He says 600 Funcinpec troops are
fighting government forces alongside Ta Mok's commanders. The heavy fighting
nearby is audible during the interview.

This presents a political dilemma for Ranariddh. He has pledged to abide by a
Japanese peace plan that aims to create conditions for Funcinpec to campaign
freely ahead of the July elections--something Hun Sen has resisted. The
Japanese plan specifically calls for the severing of links between Funcinpec
troops and Ta Mok's guerrillas. For the moment, Ranariddh is choosing denial.
"I do not have any cooperative relations with the Khmer Rouge," he said on
April 17. "Rumours currently circulating to the effect that forces loyal to me
are supporting the Khmer Rouge forces in Anlong Veng are not true."

That's not the only obstacle facing Japan and Asean as they try to find a
formula that would allow Ranariddh to return home to campaign for the polls.
The job was already hard enough for the Thai, Philippine and Indonesian foreign
ministers who met King Norodom Sihanouk in Siem Riep in mid-April. But then
Sihanouk made it harder by telling them Ranariddh should pull out of the
elections--and Cambodian politics altogether--and instead prepare to be king,
according to furious Funcinpec members.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's neighbours are becoming increasingly exasperated by the
seemingly endless war. Interviewed in Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Surin
Pitsuwan expresses optimism that elections could be held in Cambodia, but also
voices a warning. "Without a resolution to the Cambodian conflict, the region
is being perceived as insecure, unstable. That prevents further cooperation and
development for Asia," he says, pointing to plans to develop the Mekong basin
that are now delicately poised.

China, previously hesitant about taking part in the Mekong's development, is
now willing to participate, Surin says. That means that Cambodia, at the heart
of the Mekong Basin, is now the major remaining obstacle. "The region is being
denied this development by the existing Cambodian conflict," says Surin.
"Certainly, there is a sense of Cambodia fatigue in the international
community. Cambodians should realize that."

Khmer Rouge Might Turn in Pol Pot --Nate Thayer

 (Authors note: This was the release of the Story in the Far Eastern Economic Review the day before Pol Pot committed Suicide. He listened to the report on VOA Khmer language service at 8:00pm April 15, 1998. After ingesting poison, he was declared dead at 10:15PM that night. Khmer Rouge leaders contacted me 5 minutes later desperate for answers on how to handle the death of the last card in the deck they had to negotiate their survival (note time difference: 2:19pm EST is translated to 3:19am Cambodia time the following day)

Khmer Rouge Might Turn in Pol Pot
Tuesday, April 14, 1998; 2:19 p.m. EDT

HONG KONG (AP) -- Cambodia's Khmer Rouge officials have told a Hong
Kong-based magazine they want to hand their former leader Pol Pot over
to an international tribunal.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's army says it has trapped remaining Khmer Rouge
forces in the mountains near the Thai border, and is poised to finish
them off.

The Far Eastern Economic Review reported in its latest issue that the
Khmer Rouge rebels have asked Review correspondent Nate Thayer for
advice on how to deliver the notorious Pol Pot to the authorities.

Gen. Khem Nuon reportedly made the request Saturday during an interview
with Thayer at the Thai-Cambodian border.

Khmer Rouge forces have held Pol Pot, 73, under house arrest since June,
when they ousted him in a bloody internal power struggle.

Thayer interviewed Pol Pot last year after attending a communist-style
``People's Tribunal'' where the rebels denounced the former leader.

Gen. Nuon reportedly said the Khmer Rouge was unable to contact the
United Sates or other countries, and asked Thayer to put them in contact
with the ``right people.''

Thayer suggested they contact the International Committee of the Red
Cross, the report said.

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh
in 1975 and ruled Cambodia until 1979, presiding over the deaths of an
estimated 2 million people. A Vietnamese invasion in 1979 forced the
Khmer Rouge to retreat back to the jungle.

There have been calls for Pol Pot to be brought before the International
Court of Justice in the Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes
against humanity.

The rebels hope handing Pol Pot to the authorities will bring food,
medicine and other international support for the beleaguered Khmer
Rouge.

According to Cambodian military sources, the army is currently hammering
the Khmer Rouge guerillas near their former mountain stronghold along
the Thai border.

Reports indicate Khmer Rouge head Ta Mok and an undetermined number of
hard-line guerillas are holed up in the jungle peaks and attempting a
last desperate stand.

Most of the government forces are made up of Khmer Rouge defectors, who
oppose their former comrades' refusal to strike a peace deal with Phnom
Penh.

Some 5,000 defectors are waiting out the fighting 25 miles south of the
battle zone. The government said they will send them and their families
home when it is safe.

Last remnants of Khmer Rouge surrender, without their leaders-AP Robert Horn

Last remnants of Khmer Rouge surrender, without their leaders

By Robert Horn

December 5, 1998

Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand — The last main fighting force of the Khmer Rouge, the radical Marxist guerrillas who killed nearly two million Cambodians, has surrendered, a journalist close to the rebels said early today. Negotiators for the last band of guerrillas holed up near the Thai border met Friday with representatives of the government in Phnom Penh at Preah Vihear temple and agreed to lay down their arms, according to Nate Thayer of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In 1997, Thayer became the first journalist allowed to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who had not been seen in public in nearly two decades and died in April. Thayer is one of few outsiders trusted by the guerrillas.

The surrender of the Khmer Rouge would bring to an end more than 30 years of'civil war in Cambodia that began with the Marxist guerrilla's insurgency against the government in Phnom Penh in the late 1960s.

Although the fighters' top surviving leaders, Tak Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were not included in the deal, they no longer command any troops. Their former followers apparently did not want to give them up. Khem Nuon, Ta Mok's chief of staff who negotiated the surrender with government officials, said simply that they are "retired" and he refused to go into details about them, Thayer said.

The Cambodian government and the United States have expressed a desire to capture all three and try them for genocide and crimes against humanity. Khem Nuon claimed he was negotiating on behalf of 5,000 remaining ragtag troops and 15,000 civilians living under Khmer  Rouge control. Thayer said, however, that he believed the estimate of fighting men was inflated, and that many of the civilians are living in the Phu Noi refugee camp in Thailand."There must be unity. There is no other way. There is no way for a military solution. No weapons. Only political struggle," Thayer said Khem Nuon told him in a telephone interview.  The government was represented at the negotiations by Meas Sopheas, deputy chief of staff of the Cambodian military, Thayer said.

Under the agreement, Thayer said the remaining guerrillas will join the government army and the civilians will return to Anlong Veng. the guerrillas' former stronghold in the north. While it is possible some tiny bands of guerrillas are still wandering the jungles, Thayer said he knew of no sizable Khmer Rouge fighting force that could pose a viable threat to the government.

The Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 by overthrowing the U.S:-backed Lon Nol government.

Under the leadership of Pol Pot, they emptied the cities and attempted to turn the country  into an agrarian utopia by herding the population on to collective farms. The experiment was a disaster economically and in human terms. Nearly two million people died of execution, overwork, starvation or disease under the Khmer Rouge until they were ousted from power by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979. They have fought a guerrilla war against successive governments ever since, but wings of their movement began defecting to the government in 1996.

DEPT OF SCOOPS: Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?-"Talk of the Town"-The New Yorker

DEPT OF SCOOPS

Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?

The New Yorker

May 25, 1998

Talk of the Town

By Philip Gourevitch

A George Foster Peabody Award is the broadcasting world’s version of the Pulitzer, and until last Monday, when the fifty-seventh annual awards ceremony was held, at the Waldorf-Astoria, nobody who was honored with a Peabody had ever spurned the distinction. Then Nate Thayer came to town. Thayer is the thirty-eight-year-old Bangkok-based journalist-adventurer who, last July, obtained one of the great scoops of our time by trekking into the Cambodian jungle, attending the show trial of Pol Pot, and trekking out into Thailand with the whole bizarre spectacle on high-quality videotape. Much of that footage was promptly aired by ABC’s “Nightline” in a three-part series, which went on to win one of this year’s Peabody’s for “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service.” And Thayer went from being the first journalist to meet up with Pol Pot in nearly twenty years to being the first to turn down a Peabody.

 

In a letter “formally and unequivocally” rejecting his share in the award, Thayer wrote, “Ted Koppel and ‘Nightline’ literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me, and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this kind of behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.” So last week’s gala luncheon became a split-level ceremony: upstairs, in the Waldorf’s Grand ballroom, Koppel accepted the trophy—the sixth Peabody of his career—while downstairs, in one of the Waldorf’s many saloons, Thayer pleaded his case to the barman, who set up his double scotches for free, explaining, “I like a man with principles.’

Thayer has no quarrel with the series Koppel anchored, or with the fee of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that, a month ago, ‘Nightline” finally paid him for the use of his footage. But the deal—which he originally negotiated with Koppel over the phone—was for a one-week exclusive on North American television rights only. As Thayer understood it, that meant that he could sell the remaining world broadcast rights and the potentially lucrative still photographs from his encounter with Pol Pot, and that he retained the print-media exclusive to the story, which he had promised to his longtime employer, the far eastern Economic Review, a Hong Kong-based weekly. Thayer says that he chose to work with Koppel “because of his reputation for integrity” and yet “within twenty-four hours the pictures and the story were all over the place. ABC’s public-relations just took it over.”

 

Even before the first “Nightline program on Pol Pot aired, the network’s promotion teams were shipping out photographs made from Thayer’s footage, and video clips were available on the ABC web site, where anybody could simply download them. “Nightline” also allowed a writer from the Times to preview ten minutes of the footage, with the result that Thayer’s scoop—text and photographs appeared on the paper’s front page before his own article for the Review had gone to press. According to a spokeswoman for ABC, this sort of pre-broadcast publicity is normal, and the network did nothing to violate its agreement. If Thayer thinks otherwise, the spokeswoman says, “It might be that he had no idea that this is what happens when you deal with a large news organization.”

 

Thayer does think otherwise. “My main objection is that the industry has taken control of journalists, and part of our job is to fight for the integrity of our profession,” he said last week over more double scotches in a midtown bar. “I’ve just become incredibly disillusioned over the last year.” Sadly, Thayer’s sense of himself as something of a dinosaur is not inaccurate; in the dangerous pursuit of his stories that have made him famous, he has often needed to trust verbal agreements—even with Khmer Rouge cadres—as a matter of life or death. And nobody in the news business seems to recognize that fact better than Ted Koppel. Last October, at the same Waldorf podium where he would claim his latest Peabody award, Koppel addressed a banquet for the Committee to Protect Journalists, paying homage to reporters who risk “ death, or torture, or imprisonment” in violent places under repressive regimes, and he warned that American journalism was equally endangered.—but “more insidiously”—by “the trivialization of our industry.” He said, “We struggle to be first with the obvious…we’re afraid of the competition; afraid of earning less money; afraid of losing our audience.”

Last week, with the ghost of those words hanging in the hall, Koppel kept his Peabody acceptance speech brief. “Nate has chosen not to accept this award, because he has some profound differences with ABC news, with “Nightline”, with me. I’m sorry about that, genuinely sorry,” he said, adding, “While he rejects this award, I don’t want to reject the enormous contribution he made to bringing the world this story.”

 

It was odd hearing Thayer spoken of as having made a “contribution” to the story that he alone had brought out of the Cambodian Jungles. Finding Pol Pot was his biggest scoop, but for ten years, in one groundbreaking story after another, Thayer has not only chronicled Cambodia’s treacherous political history but also done a good deal to shape it. Early last month, for instance, he got word that the Khmer Rouge leaders who had purged Pol Pot, and were keeping him captive, wanted to turn the aging and sickly boss of the killing fields over to “the Americans” for trial; before an international tribunal. “But they didn’t know any Americans,” Thayer recalled. “Just me. I went back in, and spoke with them, and reported their wishes. The Voice of America’s Khmer-language service led the eight-o’clock news with the story on April 15^th. Pol Pot was listening, and a few hours later he was dead.” Thayer grinned, and ran a big hand over his shiny shaved scalp, his narrow eyes seemed to brighten. “ That’s my award,” he said, and laughed. “ I killed Pol Pot.”---Philip Gourevitch

Report: Khmer Rouge collapse drove Pol Pot to tears - AP Online

Report: Khmer Rouge collapse drove Pol Pot to tears

AP Online

April 23, 1998

AP Online

04-23-1998
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) _ Pol Pot, the tyrannical leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, broke down in tears when he realized his once-mighty guerrilla movement was on the brink of defeat, according to an account of his final days published Thursday.

Pol Pot died on April 15 in a small hut near the Thai border as Cambodian government troops were trying to finish off the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. The 73-year-old revolutionary died of a heart attack, said his comrades-turned-captors.

The account in the Hong Kong-based magazine Far Eastern Economic Review suggests the heart attack may have been brought on by hunger, lack of medical care, even shock - upon learning the Khmer Rouge was preparing to turn him over to an international tribunal for trial on genocide charges.

The account was written by U.S. journalist Nate Thayer, who last year became the first foreign journalist in 18 years to have an interview with the elusive Pol Pot. The interview occurred shortly after Pol Pot was deposed as head of the movement and placed under house arrest.

Pol Pot led the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime that through its radical Maoist-inspired policies caused the deaths of as many as 2 million Cambodians - either in mass executions or from starvation and disease. Since then, the Khmer Rouge has operated as a guerrilla army operating mostly from northern Cambodia.

Thayer quoted a Khmer Rouge military commander as saying Pol Pot died just hours after he learned of the plan to hand him over from a news broadcast by the Voice of America shortwave radio service.

``We thought the shock of him hearing this on VOA might have killed him,'' the commander, Khem Nuon, is quoted as saying.

Khem Nuon, the story noted, had told Thayer a different account a week earlier, saying Pol Pot had been informed of the decision to send him for trial and accepted it with revolutionary stoicism.

Now he claims they only told him ``we were in a very difficult situation and perhaps it was better that he go abroad. Tears came to his eyes when I told him that.''

Thayer wrote that the fighting which drove the Khmer Rouge from their northern Cambodian stronghold of Anlong Veng prevented the ailing revolutionary from receiving proper care.

``For the last few weeks he had diarrhea and we haven't had much food,'' the current Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok, was quoted as saying.

A few days before his death, Pol Pot dyed his gray hair black, suggesting he was afraid of being captured.

At one point, Pol Pot was able to glimpse the turmoil caused by the fighting as he and his wife and 12-year-old daughter were being driven from one shelter to another, his minder, Non Nou, was quoted as saying.

``When he saw the peasants and our cadres lying by the side of the road with no food or shelter, he broke down into tears,'' said Non Nou.

Pol Pot's 40-year-old widow, Muon, quoted him as saying ``My only wish is that Cambodians stay united so that Vietnam will not swallow our country.'' Vietnam drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979.

Ta Mok denied, as he has previously, speculation that he had Pol Pot killed.

The very night Pol Pot died, Ta Mok said, he had wanted to move him to another house for security reasons.

``He was sitting in his chair, waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him, he had passed away already.''

Magazine says Khmer Rouge leaders wants to surrender Pol Pot - AP Online

Magazine says Khmer Rouge leaders wants to surrender Pol Pot - AP Online

(AP pickup of Far Eastern Economic Review story released hours before Pol Pot committed suiced upon hearing the news broadcast on VOA Khmer language service at 8:00PM 15 April, 1998)
04-14-1998
HONG KONG (AP) _ Cambodia's Khmer Rouge officials have told a Hong Kong-based magazine they want to hand their former leader Pol Pot over to an international tribunal.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's army says it has trapped remaining Khmer Rouge forces in the mountains near the Thai border, and is poised to finish them off.

The Far Eastern Economic Review reported in its latest issue that the Khmer Rouge rebels have asked Review correspondent Nate Thayer for advice on how to deliver the notorious Pol Pot to the authorities.

Gen. Khem Nuon reportedly made the request Saturday during an interview with Thayer at the Thai-Cambodian border.

Khmer Rouge forces have held Pol Pot, 73, under house arrest since June, when they ousted him in a bloody internal power struggle.

Thayer interviewed Pol Pot last year after attending a communist-style ``People's Tribunal'' where the rebels denounced the former leader.

Gen. Nuon reportedly said the Khmer Rouge was unable to contact the United Sates or other countries, and asked Thayer to put them in contact with the ``right people.''

Thayer suggested they contact the International Committee of the Red Cross, the report said.

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in 1975 and ruled Cambodia until 1979, presiding over the deaths of an estimated 2 million people. A Vietnamese invasion in 1979 forced the Khmer Rouge to retreat back to the jungle.

There have been calls for Pol Pot to be brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The rebels hope handing Pol Pot to the authorities will bring food, medicine and other international support for the beleaguered Khmer Rouge.

According to Cambodian military sources, the army is currently hammering the Khmer Rouge guerillas near their former mountain stronghold along the Thai border.

Reports indicate Khmer Rouge head Ta Mok and an undetermined number of hard-line guerillas are holed up in the jungle peaks and attempting a last desperate stand.

Most of the government forces are made up of Khmer Rouge defectors, who oppose their former comrades' refusal to strike a peace deal with Phnom Penh.

Some 5,000 defectors are waiting out the fighting 25 miles south of the battle zone. The government said they will send them and their families home when it is safe.

 

Pol Pot is the Dead One Lying Down: Nate Thayer is the Live One Standing

 

Photo: Pol Pot Dead. Nate Thayer, standing, alive. It is unclear who looks like more of a threat to society

Pol Pot dead with cotton in his nose 12 hours after he died at 10:15 PM April 15, 1998. Fighting was raging in this jungle on the mountain north of Anlong Veng, the Khmer Rouge final headquarters they lost to government forces and defecting Khmer Rouge in the days before. I had been called by the Khmer Rouge to these jungles in the days before to tell me that they were now willing to turn Pol Pot over to face an international criminal tribunal for crimes against humanity. He heard my Far Easterrn Economic Review report rebroadcast on the Voice of America Khmer language service at 8:00PM on the 15th of April. He took a lethal dose of Valium and the anti-malarial drug Chloroquine. Two hours and 15 minutes later he was dead. His 37 year old wife informed his nemesis Ta Mok.  The Khmer Rouge Army chief of staff called me five minuttes later in a panic, having just lost his last negotiating card. Weeks later Mok was captured. He died in prison awaiting charges for the deaths of thousands. Within weeks the remaining Khmer Rouge disintegrated.




.

Photo Copyright: Nate Thayer. All rights reserved. No reuse or publication allowed without written permission from the author

SURRENDER OF KHMER ROUGE'S LAST FIGHTING FORCE IS REPORTED

SURRENDER OF KHMER ROUGE'S LAST FIGHTING FORCE IS REPORTED

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

December 5, 1998

The last main fighting force of the Khmer Rouge, the radical Marxist guerrillas who killed nearly 2 million Cambodians, have surrendered, a journalist close to the rebels said today.

Negotiators for the last band of guerrillas holed up near the Thai border met yesterday with representatives of the government in Phnom Penh at Preah Vihear temple and agreed to lay down their arms, according to Nate Thayer of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In 1997, Thayer became the first journalist allowed to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who had not been seen in public in nearly two decades and died in April. Thayer is one of few outsiders trusted by the guerrillas.

The surrender of the Khmer Rouge would bring to an end more than 30 years of civil war in Cambodia that began with the Marxist guerrilla's insurgency against the government in Phnom Penh in the late 1960s.

Although the fighters' top surviving leaders, Tak Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, were not included in the deal, they no longer command any troops. Their former followers apparently did not want to give them up.

Khem Nuon, Ta Mok's chief of staff who negotiated the surrender with government officials, said simply that they are ``retired'' and he refused to go into details about them, Thayer said.

The Cambodian government and the United States have expressed a desire to capture all three and try them for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Khem Nuon claimed he was negotiating on behalf of 5,000 remaining ragtag troops and 15,000 civilians living under Khmer Rouge control.

Thayer said, however, that he believed the estimate of fighting men was inflated, and that many of the civilians are living in the Phu Noi refugee camp in Thailand.

``There must be unity. There is no other way. There is no way for a military solution. No weapons. Only political struggle,'' Thayer said Khem Nuon told him in a telephone interview.

The government was represented at the negotiations by Meas Sopheas, deputy chief of staff of the Cambodian military, Thayer said.

Under the agreement, Thayer said the remaining guerrillas will join the government army and the civilians will return to Anlong Veng, the guerrillas' former stronghold in the north.

Although it is possible some tiny bands of guerrillas are still wandering the jungles, Thayer said he knew of no sizable Khmer Rouge fighting force that could pose a viable threat to the government.

SURRENDER OF KHMER ROUGE'S LAST FIGHTING FORCE IS REPORTED

SURRENDER OF KHMER ROUGE'S LAST FIGHTING FORCE IS REPORTED

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

December 5, 1998

The last main fighting force of the Khmer Rouge, the radical Marxist guerrillas who killed nearly 2 million Cambodians, have surrendered, a journalist close to the rebels said today.

Negotiators for the last band of guerrillas holed up near the Thai border met yesterday with representatives of the government in Phnom Penh at Preah Vihear temple and agreed to lay down their arms, according to Nate Thayer of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In 1997, Thayer became the first journalist allowed to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who had not been seen in public in nearly two decades and died in April. Thayer is one of few outsiders trusted by the guerrillas.

The surrender of the Khmer Rouge would bring to an end more than 30 years of civil war in Cambodia that began with the Marxist guerrilla's insurgency against the government in Phnom Penh in the late 1960s.

Although the fighters' top surviving leaders, Tak Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, were not included in the deal, they no longer command any troops. Their former followers apparently did not want to give them up.

Khem Nuon, Ta Mok's chief of staff who negotiated the surrender with government officials, said simply that they are ``retired'' and he refused to go into details about them, Thayer said.

The Cambodian government and the United States have expressed a desire to capture all three and try them for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Khem Nuon claimed he was negotiating on behalf of 5,000 remaining ragtag troops and 15,000 civilians living under Khmer Rouge control.

Thayer said, however, that he believed the estimate of fighting men was inflated, and that many of the civilians are living in the Phu Noi refugee camp in Thailand.

``There must be unity. There is no other way. There is no way for a military solution. No weapons. Only political struggle,'' Thayer said Khem Nuon told him in a telephone interview.

The government was represented at the negotiations by Meas Sopheas, deputy chief of staff of the Cambodian military, Thayer said.

Under the agreement, Thayer said the remaining guerrillas will join the government army and the civilians will return to Anlong Veng, the guerrillas' former stronghold in the north.

Although it is possible some tiny bands of guerrillas are still wandering the jungles, Thayer said he knew of no sizable Khmer Rouge fighting force that could pose a viable threat to the government.

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

 

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

AsianWeek

November 25, 1998

1

AsianWeek
11-25-1998
Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Nate Thayer, the first Western journalist in nearly two decades to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1997, was awarded $20,000 this weekend for outstanding international investigative reporting.

Thayer is the first recipient of the prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is the Southeast Asia correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

 

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

AsianWeek

November 25, 1998

AsianWeek
11-25-1998
Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Nate Thayer, the first Western journalist in nearly two decades to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1997, was awarded $20,000 this weekend for outstanding international investigative reporting.

Thayer is the first recipient of the prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is the Southeast Asia correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Ethnic NewsWatch SoftLine Information, Inc., Stamford, CT

Green Left Weekly: Letters to the Editor

Green Left Weekly-Australia

Cambodia

Sept 30, 1998

Green Left Weekly's news is usually distinguished by its persistent pursuance of democracy and human rights in Southeast Asia.

However, its coverage of the Cambodian elections and aftermath has been shamefully generous towards Hun Sen and the Cambodian Peoples' Party, who, like their Indonesian, Malaysian and Burmese counterparts in tyranny, spare no means in suppressing democracy.

According to Nate Thayer, renowned for his penetrative journalism in Cambodia, the international observers, under pressure from the ASEAN nations and France, were determined to endorse the elections at any cost, despite a preponderance of evidence of intimidation and fraud.

Yet Green Left Weekly took the endorsement by the Joint International Observer Group uncritically. At least the international observers reproach Hung Sen for his past abuses, the bloody July 1997 coup and the deadly harassment of opposition.

According to UN human rights investigators, Hun Sen's government is responsible for over 100 politically motivated disappearances and murders in the past year. I could find not a single allusion to these in Helen Jarvis' "Losers reject election results" (GLW #327).

Jarvis depicts the Cambodian opposition — Sam Rainsy and Prince Ranariddh — as spoilers, bent on advancing questionable causes.

She may have a point: both invoke violent racism against the Vietnamese minority; and both crave power. But her reckless analysis tramples under the courageous associations of women, workers, students and new political parties who struggle for greater freedoms under Hun Sen.

The stolen elections provide much-needed international legitimacy for the corruption, militarism and criminality that define Hun Sen's rule. International approbation means Hun Sen and his circle can resume their real political program: the pursuit of personal power and fortune.

Paul Keys
San Francisco USA
[Abridged.]

Cambodia

Wednesday, October 14, 1998

Reply by Allen Myers

Paul Keys (Write on, September 30) bases his criticisms of GLW's Cambodian reporting on unreliable sources.

First among these is Nate Thayer, mistakenly described by Keys as "renowned for his penetrative journalism". In fact, Thayer is renowned as the only journalist to whom Khmer Rouge leaders have always been willing to speak.

Thayer's reporting on Cambodia always relies heavily on the views of "observers". These observers are never further identified, but what they claim to be true is, almost invariably, what the US State Department would like to be true.

Thayer makes no secret of his hostility toward the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which he has opposed for years from the unmistakable standpoint of pro-imperialist anticommunism.

A second unreliable source was the media reports concerning "UN human rights investigators"

Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

AP Online

May 18, 1998

AP Online
05-18-1998
NEW YORK (AP) _ Nate Thayer, a Bangkok, Thailand-based journalist who sold a story about Cambodian leader Pol Pot to ABC's ``Nightline,'' rejected the prestigious Peabody award for the piece, saying ABC and Ted Koppel stole his work.

Thayer, 38, said in the May 25 edition of New Yorker magazine, that Koppel promised the story would be a one-week exclusive with North American television rights only.

But before the story went on the air, Thayer said ABC shipped photos of the footage worldwide, put the news on its Web site and allowed The New York Times to preview part of the story in a publicity effort. The effort scooped Thayer's own print account for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

In a letter rejecting the Peabody, Thayer said ``Ted Koppel and `Nightline' literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.''

ABC said the pre-broadcast publicity is common practice for such an exclusive story.

Koppel said he was sorry Thayer chose not to accept the Peabody, broadcasting's equivalent to the Pulitzer.

``While he rejects the award, I don't want to reject the enormous contribution that he made to bringing the world this story,'' Koppel said last Monday at the 57th annual awards luncheon.

Thayer was paid $350,000 last month for the story, which aired last July. The video captured the show trial of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader blamed for the deaths of up to 2 million of his countrymen. It was the first time in nearly 20 years the Cambodian dictator, who died in prison in March, was caught on camera.


Copyright 1998 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This material is published under license from the Associated Press. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service. For permission to reuse this article, contact Copyright Clearance Center.

Television Winners.(Peabody Awards): "THE TRIAL OF POL POT" ABC News/Nightline Washington, D.C.

Television Winners.(Peabody Awards)

Broadcasting & Cable

May 11, 1998

"THE TRIAL OF POL POT" ABC News/Nightline Washington, D.C.

The best television journalism is groundbreaking, authoritative and evidentiary. It brings a significant news event to the forefront, and does so with the critical background research, context and thoughtful presentation that it requires. Such is the case with this series of reports spanning July 2830, 1997. The reports were made possible by the heroic and exclusive footage provided by Nate Thayer, correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and his cameraman, David McKaige of Asiaworks. Mr. Thayer and Mr. McKaige were invited to a remote area of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge to witness the so-called "trial" of Pol Pot, one of history's infamous genocidal despots. The men brought back video of stunning clarity and historical importance. While broadcasting this monumental reportage was in itself significant and meritorious, Nightline enhanced its meaning and impact by providing exceptional historical perspective, important tests of authenticity, and valuable interpretations about the veracity and significance of the trial. In addition to the heroic and historic efforts of Mr. Thayer, credit is due to the accomplished broadcast news professionals at Nightline, including executive producer Tom Bettag, anchor and managing editor Ted Koppel, producers Leroy Sievers and Bryan Myers, senior producers Richard Harris, Mark Nelson and C. Scott Willis, director Eric Siegel, and correspondent Jim Laurie. For presenting a television news event of international significance and for doing so with reasoned analysis, skillful writing, balanced research, and insightful interviewing, a Peabody is presented to ABC News/Nightline for "The Trial of Pol Pot."

 

Report: Khmer Rouge collapse drove Pol Pot to tears

Report: Khmer Rouge collapse drove Pol Pot to tears

AP Online

April 23, 1998

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) _ Pol Pot, the tyrannical leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, broke down in tears when he realized his once-mighty guerrilla movement was on the brink of defeat, according to an account of his final days published Thursday.

Pol Pot died on April 15 in a small hut near the Thai border as Cambodian government troops were trying to finish off the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. The 73-year-old revolutionary died of a heart attack, said his comrades-turned-captors.

The account in the Hong Kong-based magazine Far Eastern Economic Review suggests the heart attack may have been brought on by hunger, lack of medical care, even shock - upon learning the Khmer Rouge was preparing to turn him over to an international tribunal for trial on genocide charges.

The account was written by U.S. journalist Nate Thayer, who last year became the first foreign journalist in 18 years to have an interview with the elusive Pol Pot. The interview occurred shortly after Pol Pot was deposed as head of the movement and placed under house arrest.

Pol Pot led the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime that through its radical Maoist-inspired policies caused the deaths of as many as 2 million Cambodians - either in mass executions or from starvation and disease. Since then, the Khmer Rouge has operated as a guerrilla army operating mostly from northern Cambodia.

Thayer quoted a Khmer Rouge military commander as saying Pol Pot died just hours after he learned of the plan to hand him over from a news broadcast by the Voice of America shortwave radio service.

``We thought the shock of him hearing this on VOA might have killed him,'' the commander, Khem Nuon, is quoted as saying.

Khem Nuon, the story noted, had told Thayer a different account a week earlier, saying Pol Pot had been informed of the decision to send him for trial and accepted it with revolutionary stoicism.

Now he claims they only told him ``we were in a very difficult situation and perhaps it was better that he go abroad. Tears came to his eyes when I told him that.''

Thayer wrote that the fighting which drove the Khmer Rouge from their northern Cambodian stronghold of Anlong Veng prevented the ailing revolutionary from receiving proper care.

``For the last few weeks he had diarrhea and we haven't had much food,'' the current Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok, was quoted as saying.

A few days before his death, Pol Pot dyed his gray hair black, suggesting he was afraid of being captured.

At one point, Pol Pot was able to glimpse the turmoil caused by the fighting as he and his wife and 12-year-old daughter were being driven from one shelter to another, his minder, Non Nou, was quoted as saying.

``When he saw the peasants and our cadres lying by the side of the road with no food or shelter, he broke down into tears,'' said Non Nou.

Pol Pot's 40-year-old widow, Muon, quoted him as saying ``My only wish is that Cambodians stay united so that Vietnam will not swallow our country.'' Vietnam drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979.

Ta Mok denied, as he has previously, speculation that he had Pol Pot killed.

The very night Pol Pot died, Ta Mok said, he had wanted to move him to another house for security reasons.

``He was sitting in his chair, waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him, he had passed away already.''


Copyright 1998 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.

Pol Pot's World Ended With a Whimper; Khmer Rouge Chief Was Sick, Friendless, Frightened of Dying

Pol Pot's World Ended With a Whimper; Khmer Rouge Chief Was Sick, Friendless, Frightened of Dying

The Washington Post

April 23, 1998 | Keith B. Richburg

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia's killing fields, spent his final days sick, hungry and fearful of dying, according to new details emerging from the Cambodian jungle.

He was suffering from diarrhea. He cried at the sight of the troops he once commanded collapsing along the roadside. And he could hear the sound of government artillery moving ever closer to his jungle redoubt -- sometimes forcing him and his wife to cower in a freshly dug trench just outside their small wooden hut.

A final indignity came when Pol Pot learned on the Voice of America's Cambodian language broadcast that his former colleagues were negotiating to turn him over to an international tribunal to face genocide charges. Pol Pot heard the news at 8 p.m. on April 15. Two hours and 15 minutes later, he was dead, apparently of a heart attack, his comrades and wife said. These new insights into Pol Pot's final days have emerged in a detailed article in today's Far Eastern Economic Review written by correspondent Nate Thayer, a Cambodia expert who has spent the last decade reporting on the elusive Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement and who last year became the first reporter to interview Pol Pot in nearly two decades. Thayer's account -- based on hours of interviews with Pol Pot's 40-year-old wife, Muon, and the new hard-line Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok -- paint an extraordinary picture of the enigmatic Pol Pot's physical and mental deterioration. Perhaps most striking is that the Khmer Rouge leader deemed responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million to 1.7 million Cambodians expressed fear about his own demise. " `My father died at 73,' " his wife quoted Pol Pot as saying. " `I am 73 now. My time is not far away.' " Ta Mok, a one-legged guerrilla commander known as "the Butcher," told Thayer: "He wanted to live. He took medicine all the time. He wanted to live. He did not want to die, but he had lost everything, and he was old." Other Khmer Rouge leaders described Pol Pot's distress recently, when he looked out the window of a four-wheel drive vehicle as he was being driven away from a jungle battlefield and saw guerrillas he once commanded lying along the road without food or shelter. "He broke down in tears," said Gen. Noun Nou, who was driving the vehicle. Muon, Pol Pot's wife, said: "He saw the people lying on the ground and he cried." Pol Pot then told her: " `My only wish is that the Cambodians stay united, so that Vietnam will not swallow our country.' " From the new accounts, Pol Pot's final days were those of a man hunted -- and clearly afraid of being caught, particularly by Cambodian government troops whom he saw as puppets of Vietnam, historically a foe of Cambodia. There was little food available once the government offensive forced the rebels from their base at Anlong Veng, said Khmer Rouge officials. "For the last few weeks he had diarrhea, and we haven't had much food because of the fighting," Ta Mok said. On April 10, five days before his death, Pol Pot dyed his gray hair black to fool Khmer Rouge troops who had mutinied and were fighting on the side of government forces. "For a person to do that, it showed real fear in his mind," Khmer Rouge military chief of staff Khem Nuon was quoted as saying. At one point, Khmer Rouge leaders, including Ta Mok, told Pol Pot that he might have to leave Cambodia, and tears reportedly welled in the former dictator's eyes. Their intention was to turn Pol Pot over to an international tribunal to gain new respectability. Khmer Rouge officials even asked Thayer's advice on how to turn over Pol Pot, since they had no contact with the United States or other Western countries or groups. Thayer suggested they approach the International Committee of the Red Cross. But Pol Pot apparently was led to believe that he would be sent into asylum overseas, not turned over for trial. It appears he discovered the truth on Wednesday, April 15, when he tuned in his shortwave radio -- one of the few possessions he had left -- to the 8 p.m. Cambodian language news broadcast of the Voice of America. "He listened to VOA every night," Khem Nuon told Thayer in an interview in the jungle, "and VOA on Wednesday reported your story at 8 p.m., that he would be turned over to an international court. We thought the shock of hearing this on VOA might have killed him." Thayer was the first journalist invited across the Cambodian border from Thailand last Thursday to see the body -- which he said seemed to wear a pained expression, with one eye shut and the other half open. But Thayer said he looked closely at the body, even poking it, and saw no outward evidence of foul play. The Khmer Rouge, though, were eager to prove to the world that Pol Pot died a natural death. "I did not kill him," Ta Mok insisted. "He was sitting in his chair, waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sounds of dying. When she touched him, he had already passed away." Thayer said in an interview that he was well aware of Pol Pot's health problems, because the guerrilla leader had listed them in their October meeting. Pol Pot told Thayer he suffered from a heart condition and serious respiratory problems. Thayer recalled that at the time Pol Pot could walk only a few feet before "he was literally gasping for breath." Thayer said that in February, during another trip he made to the Khmer Rouge-held jungle of northern Cambodia, he carried with him heart medicine that the Khmer Rouge had requested for Pol Pot. "I brought the medicine in, and I delivered it to the Khmer Rouge leadership to give to Pol Pot," Thayer said. But Thayer needed some forensic evidence to take back to Thailand -- evidence that the body was indeed that of Pol Pot and that could perhaps provide clues to the cause of death. So Thayer decided he needed Pol Pot's false front teeth. "The teeth is what I was going after," Thayer said. "We knew that his two front teeth were false, and there aren't any dentists in Cambodia so there had to be dental records somewhere. If I came out with the two front teeth off the corpse and they matched, there'd be no question that was Pol Pot." "They agreed to give me the teeth," Thayer said. "The wife was a little freaked out -- she didn't like the idea. . . .The wife looked at me like I was nuts." The Khmer Rouge leaders later changed their minds about the teeth after more journalists poured over the border. Ta Mok and other Khmer Rouge leaders said they hope Pol Pot's death will allow the group to rehabilitate its image and shed its murderous reputation. "Pol Pot has nothing to do with our movement," Ta Mok said. "It is Pol Pot who caused trouble to our movement. Without Pol Pot, our movement might not be like it is today."

Copyright 2009 The Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service. For permission to reuse this article, contact Copyright Clearance Center.

The most evil man in the world is dead: The Independent (London, England)

The most evil man in the world is dead

The Independent (London, England)

April 17, 1998 | Stephen Vines in Hong Kong

POL POT, the Cambodian dictator whose name is synonymous with genocide, is dead. The man responsible for the killing, torture and starvation of over one million of his people, died peacefully following a heart attack.

There was confusion at first over whether reports of his death were true. But it now seems clear that he died late on Wednesday in a Cambodian village two miles from the border with Thailand. His body was shown to a group of journalists yesterday. They included the American reporter Nate Thayer, who has interviewed Pol Pot twice recently and is convinced that the dead man is the former dictator.

After causing havoc in his lifetime by plunging Cambodia into one of the most disastrous experiments in social engineering the world has seen, his death at the age of 76 was prosaic. Dressed in baggy grey trousers and an off-white, short-sleeved cotton shirt his body was laid out in a simple hut reeking of formaldehyde. Teenage Khmer Rouge soldiers, who resembled those who carried him to power for four bloody years, starting in 1975, guarded the body. Before he died, they had been his captors. According to reports earlier in the week the rump of the Khmer Rouge had been planning to turn him over for international trial in a last attempt to save their own skins from advancing Cambodian government forces. Pol Pot died deserted by his erstwhile comrades-in-arms in their last stronghold. Having inspired terror in Cambodia, he had become an entirely marginal figure. As if to emphasise the isolation facing the Khmer Rouge, the only sound to be heard while Pol Pot lay at rest was the rumble of fighting between Khmer Rouge and government troops. There is no suggestion of foul play in Pol Pot's death. Since he was arrested by his own troops last year he has been ill. The Cambodian government spokesman, Khieu Kahnarith, said the state wanted to conduct a medical investigation but thought it unlikely that the former dictator had been killed. Non Nou, the Khmer Rouge commander responsible for Pol Pot's security, said: "If they are afraid the body was tampered with, ask his wife. She was there". It is unlikely that there will be much mourning for Pol Pot. Cambodia's King, Norodom Sihanouk, who twice allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, recently called him "one of the most horrible monsters ever created". Known as "Brother Number One"' during the years of his rule, Pol Pot may have been responsible for the deaths of one-fifth of Cambodia's population. Researchers believe as many as 1.7 million people died as a result of executions, torture and mass starvation. Pol Pot received his higher education in France and acquired a reputation there as an amiable, fun-loving student. It was in France that he also became acquainted with Marxism and back in his homeland he built up the revolutionary movement which overthrew Lon Nol's regime in 1975. The movement he helped to create is now largely decimated. It helped create the current government led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who is also no stranger to using violence for political ends.

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture.

 

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture.

The Mirror (London, England)

April 17, 1998 | Dowdney, Mark

1

EVEN in death Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, held the world in suspense.

The evil tyrant, whose Killing Fields reign claimed up to two million lives, was reportedly found dead yesterday in his remote jungle hideout. The picture on the right was produced as evidence. But the grey hair revealed at Pol Pot's show trial in Cambodia last year has now turned dark.

And last night there were demands for positive proof that the 73-year- old dictator had not faked his death to escape justice.

Cambodia's Embassy in Paris said Pol Pot had been reported dead many times before and warned that yesterday's reports had not been confirmed by "trustworthy sources." The body identified as

Pol Pot lay on a mattress in a hut in northern Cambodia.

The only independent witness allowed to see it - American journalist Nate Thayer - insisted it WAS the deposed Khmer Rouge leader.

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review and is one of the few Westerners to meet Pol Pot, took photographs of the corpse.

He said last night: "There is no question that this is Pol Pot."

Cambodian diplomats in New York said the tyrant may have dyed his hair as a disguise in recent months when international pressure mounted to put him on trial for genocide.

The US State Department said Washington had no independent confirmation that Pol Pot was dead, but added that it had no reason to doubt the "compelling" photographic evidence.

IS POL POT REALLY DEAD?; Mystery of Killing Fields tyrant who massacred 2m.

IS POL POT REALLY DEAD?; Mystery of Killing Fields tyrant who massacred 2m.

Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland)

April 17, 1998 | Dowdney, Mark

Claims that evil tyrant Pol Pot had died were thrown into doubt last night.

The Khmer Rouge insisted the body they put on show was his.

But observers questioned its resemblance to the 73-year-old dictator, who was filmed nine months ago.

They also pointed out the stark difference in hair colour -with Pot's hair apparently DARKENING as he got older.

During his 18 years hidden in the jungle, the cunning monster was also reported dead several times - only to reappear.

Blood-soaked Pot, responsible for the deaths of two million of his own people in Cambodia's infamous Killing Fields, was due to be put on trial by the West for genocide.

The Cambodian Embassy in Paris expressed doubts over his death - and said it could have been faked to cheat justice.

An official embassy statement read: "We warn public opinion against this news which is not confirmed by trustworthy sources."

The embassy added that "it could not be ruled out once again that the death has been orchestrated to end the hunt to bring him to trial".

America's State Department could offer no conclusive evidence either.

Spokesman James Rubin said Washington had no independent confirmation.

Cambodia's present leaders also found it hard to accept that he was finally dead.

Officials insisted his body should be viewed by more independent witnesses -as well as being checked for poison.

However, others are convinced Pot is dead. Only one independent witness was allowed to see the body yesterday, American journalist Nate Thayer.

He said: "There is no question that this is Pol Pot and that he is dead."

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review, took photographs in the hut where the body lay.

He is one of the few Westerners who has met Pot before.

Thayer attended Pot's show trial last year, staged by the dictator's former comrades.

Meanwhile, the Cambodian Mission in New York put forward a theory for the difference in hair colour.

An official said: "We believe he dyed it to avoid recognition."

Pot is said to have died from a heart attack.

But another theory is that he was murdered because he knew too many secrets, which would have come out at the genocide trial.

China and Thailand feared what he might say about their secret support for his evil regime.

Youk Chhang, who is gathering evidence against top Khmer Rouge leaders, said: "I think we could almost have arrested him tomorrow, it was very close."

He said countries like Thailand and China must be "relieved."

Pot's own men, still at bay in the jungles of northern Cambodia, also knew they would remain outcasts if the horrors they oversaw in the 70s were raked over at a trial.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger voiced the suspicions of many yesterday in blaming the Khmer Rouge for the death. He said: "I don't exclude they did it to avoid having to hand him over for trial. If they refused, they would have been outlawed even more."

The exact truth may never be known -but Cambodians are angry that Pot has never answered for his crimes.

It would be a grim irony if the man whose savagery rivalled that of Stalin and Hitler died peacefully in his own bed, as the Khmer Rouge claim.

Chey Sopheara, director of Phnom Penh's genocide museum, said: "If he is really dead, he will be judged in hell.

"I regret it is now too late to bring him to justice. The West should not have delayed arresting him from 1979 to now.

"How can we find justice now for those millions of people who died during his rule?"

Kim Saren lost her parents, five brothers and four sisters to Pot's regime.

She said: "He deserved to die. I am only sorry that he died so easily without being tried."

The body was put on display for a small group of Western journalists who reached the remote spot near the Thai border.

It was lying on a bed wearing trousers and a shirt, and partly covered by a green sheet.

A few flowers lay around its head and the hut reeked of preserving fluid.

The body was guarded by teenage guerrillas armed with AK-47s.

Pot had been under house arrest since he was denounced by his own supporters last year and toppled from power.

His jailer, General Noun Nou, said the body was due to be cremated according to Khmer tradition. That would also destroy any evidence.

Nou said: "His wife came to us at midnight. She learned that her husband was dead when she was tying his mosquito net for him."

He denied Pot was murdered, adding: "If they are afraid the body was tampered with, ask his wife. She was there. No one has done anything like that.

"His death is good for the Khmer Rouge. I hope his bad name will vanish with his death."

Pot's reign of terror was portrayed in the 1984 Oscar-winning film The Killing Fields.

American journalist Sidney Schanberg wrote the book which was turned into the movie, based on his horrific experiences. He was played by actor Sam Waterston.

Schanberg yesterday said the only sad thing about the reports of Pot's death was that he didn't face trial.

The journalist added: "He didn't think of himself as a killer. But he knew what he was doing. He had to know the bodies were piling up."

Cambodia and its people have never recovered from the atrocities he committed. The skulls of his victims, on public display in huge heaps, still cry for vengeance, say Cambodians.

After seizing power in 1975, Pot sealed Cambodia off from the rest of the world.

He was described by the king he ousted as "one of the most powerful monsters ever created by humanity".

The communist hardliner turned his country into a vast slave labour camp.

Pot's aim was to "start again" and return Cambodia to what he called Year Zero, with no Western influences.

The population of Phnom Penh - those who survived the death squads - were ordered into the countryside to work in the fields. They included the old, the sick, even toddlers. No one was spared.

Anyone who resisted was "re- educated". Even those who wore glasses were massacred.

Survivors recall being told by the Khmer Rouge troops: "Keeping you is no loss. Losing you is no loss."

Pot's torturers killed at least 18,000 people in Toul Sleng, the notorious jail in Phnom Penh where the gutters ran red with blood.

Amnesty International are now calling for Pot's fellow leaders to be caught and punished. A spokesman said: "Pol Pot was not the only architect of Cambodia's Killing Fields.

"He may have died but many other senior Khmer Rouge cadres remain free. They should not be allowed to also escape punishment."

Despite the horrors, Pot never apologised for his crimes.

When his mad reign was forcibly ended by the North Vietnamese in 1979, he simply slipped away into the jungles with his men and remained hidden.

Last year, in the only interview he ever gave while on the run, Pot said: "I would like to say my conscience is clear.

"Everything I have done and contributed is first for the nation and the people and race of Cambodia."

THEIR HANDS WERE STAINED WITH BLOOD

POL POT was one of long line of despots who stained the pages of history with the blood of their victims.

GENGHIS KHAN struck terror eight centuries ago and his name is still a byword for savagery. The Mongol warlord massacred the populations of city after city.

Historians now believe JOSEPH STALIN was responsible for the deaths of around 20million people in the Soviet Union. Many died in camps or in mass purges.

ADOLF HITLER was the twisted architect of the Final Solution. Six million Jews were put to death, many from countries conquered by Hitler's ruthless war machine. He also ordered the execution of many of his opponents within Germany in the 30s and 40s.

IDI AMIN'S reign of terror in Uganda, from a coup in 1971 until he fled in 1979, saw the deaths of up to 500,000 people. He is said to have taken pleasure in throwing personal foes to the crocodiles.

Iraq's SADDAM HUSSEIN, like many despots before him, claims to have the support of his people.

But he stands accused of the deaths of thousands of Kurds and Iranians in chemical warfare attacks.

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture: EVEN in death Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, held the world in suspense.

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture

The Mirror (London, England)

April 17, 1998 | Dowdney, Mark

EVEN in death Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, held the world in suspense.

The evil tyrant, whose Killing Fields reign claimed up to two million lives, was reportedly found dead yesterday in his remote jungle hideout. The picture on the right was produced as evidence. But the grey hair revealed at Pol Pot's show trial in Cambodia last year has now turned dark.

And last night there were demands for positive proof that the 73-year- old dictator had not faked his death to escape justice.

Cambodia's Embassy in Paris said Pol Pot had been reported dead many times before and warned that yesterday's reports had not been confirmed by "trustworthy sources." The body identified as

Pol Pot lay on a mattress in a hut in northern Cambodia.

The only independent witness allowed to see it - American journalist Nate Thayer - insisted it WAS the deposed Khmer Rouge leader.

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review and is one of the few Westerners to meet Pol Pot, took photographs of the corpse.

He said last night: "There is no question that this is Pol Pot."

Cambodian diplomats in New York said the tyrant may have dyed his hair as a disguise in recent months when international pressure mounted to put him on trial for genocide.

The US State Department said Washington had no independent confirmation that Pol Pot was dead, but added that it had no reason to doubt the "compelling" photographic evidence.

COPYRIGHT 2009 MGN LTD. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service. For permission to reuse this article, contact Copyright Clearance Center.

Pol Pot Dead: NPR All Things Considered

Pol Pot Dead

NPR All Things Considered

April 16, 1998 

Linda Wertheimer, Robert Seigel  

00-00-0000
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

Pol Pot, the leader of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge movement, is dead. He was 73 years old. His political movement, the Khmer Rouge, was responsible for the deaths of more than a million-and-a-half Cambodians.

Pol Pot's regime controlled Cambodia to 1975 to 1979, and eliminated all those who stood in the way of creating a agrarian Marxist state. But the Khmer Rouge was forced from power after a Vietnamese invasion. The group was essentially broken into factions.

And last year, Pol Pot was tried by his former comrades as a rival took control of what remained of the Khmer Rouge.

In the last year, the United Nations and the United States had revived an effort to formally hold Pol Pot responsible for the genocide that occurred in the killing fields of Cambodia.

Nate Thayer, the Southeast Asia correspondent for the "Far Eastern Economic Review," first interviewed Pol Pot in October 1997.

It was the first interview the leader had given to a western journalist in 18 years.

Earlier today, members of the Khmer Rouge took Thayer to see the body of Pol Pot at a camp near the Ti border. He confirmed that the body being displayed was indeed Pol Pot.

NATE THAYER, SOUTHEAST ASIA CORRESPONDENT, "FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW" : There is no question that I saw the body of Pol Pot, it was Pol Pot, and that he is dead. There is not question of that. There is questions raised on, of course, how he died. They say he died from heart failure. In fact, it's logical. I tend to believe it. But really without forensics it's impossible and of course there is speculation that he was the victim of a political murder.

WERTHEIMER: The reason that the news of his death has been received with some skepticism in Southeast Asia and here is that the United States has been interested in trying to arrest Pol Pot and has been working with China to try to do that and felt, I believe, that that was a possibility, that it was coming close, and then he dies.

THAYER: That's right. There was movement and significant movement that the remnants of the Khmer Rouge were now willing to turn Pol Pot over for proceedings in front of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity.

Now, Pol Pot's health has been extremely frail for a long time.

For the last 20 days or so he has been taken through the jungles as they've lost much of their territory. Today, while I was in the Khmer Rouge area, there was very heavy fighting very close by both incoming and outgoing artillery and small arms fire. There were regular mine explosions. The trauma of an elderly, extremely frail, probably very demoralized man under these conditions very easily could have prompted a heart attack, which is what they -- his wife, who I interviewed this afternoon, claims happened last night.

WERTHEIMER: Does the death of Pol Pot change anything for Cambodia? Is he still significant enough a figure that it changes the equation there?

THAYER: You know it's a very good question because, in fact, Pol Pot has been held up as the boogie man lurking in the jungles. But in fact he's been purged from any political role for some time.

And along with Pol Pot's death, unfortunately, goes the chance of finding out really what happened and why. There's so many unanswered questions of why so many people suffered so unspeakably and so unfairly. And this man was in sole control.

But the fact is that there are thousands of people who are guilty of crimes against humanity who continue to wield power in Cambodia' s mainstream politics today: the current prime minister, the defense minister, the interior minister, the finance minister, the justice minister, hundreds of generals in the military and security forces.

And these are people whose government is recognized and supported by the United States, among others.

Much of the United States' so-called quest for Pol Pot is really Washington politics. The fact is that there are mass murderers who are in power who are being issued diplomatic visas and have free run of the country today.

And maybe the death of Pol Pot will refocus really where it should be, in my view, which is that Cambodia is a country that is really on its knees, and whose people continue to suffer under despotic leaders 20 years after Pol Pot was driven from power.

WERTHEIMER: Thanks very much, Nate Thayer.

THAYER: OK, thank you very much.

WERTHEIMER: Nate Thayer is a correspondent for the "Far Eastern Economic Review." This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1998 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954

Pol Pot's Really Dead-NPR

Pol Pot's Really Dead

NPR Morning Edition

April 16, 1998

NateThayer, Susan Stamberg    

00-00-0000
SUSAN STAMBERG, HOST: This is MORNING EDITION. I'm Susan Stamberg in for Bob Edwards.

Pol Pot, the former leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, is dead.

Pol Pot led a movement that killed, starved or worked to death some two million people between 1975 and 1979. After a power struggle last year, he was put under house arrest, and his followers have been on the run in recent months in the jungles of the Thailand-Cambodia border. And it is there that he died last night.

Nate Thayer is on the line with us from the Thai-Cambodian border. Mr. Thayer reports for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

You were shown a body today. And people claim that it is the body of Pol Pot. Tell us -- describe the scene for us.

NATE THAYER, REPORTER, FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW: Well, there is no question that Pol Pot died. He died last night. He died apparently of heart failure as the direct cause, but also clearly contributing causes of fleeing through the jungles for the last 20 days as the government has taken much of the Khmer Rouge area. We were brought to Pol Pot's house. Pol Pot was lying in a bed, a very spartan room. He had some very crude temporary embalming techniques. And he was dead. There's no question that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge for the last 38 years, died about 16 hours ago.

STAMBERG: Who was it who brought you to that house?

THAYER: We were brought into the jungles of northern Cambodia, into some of the last jungle enclaves of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. We were met and spent several hours with Ta Mok, the leader of the rump of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces. It was his soldiers who brought us to the house of Pol Pot, a house that was surrounded by mine fields. It had newly dug trenches.

There was heavy fighting going on near -- in nearby front lines. And we met both his wife and his daughter and saw the body of Pol Pot, which is -- will be cremated, they say, in about 48 hours.

STAMBERG: What was -- what's the last time that you saw Pol Pot, Mr. Thayer? THAYER: A few months ago, I was the journalist who attended the people's tribunal of Pol Pot when he was purged because of internal disputes last July. I then interviewed him at length several months ago and then again went in just a number of weeks ago. We knew Pol Pot was very sick. Clearly, the trauma of the advancing government forces, which had forced the Khmer Rouge out of their productive zones and into these very rugged jungles and mountain escarpments along the Thai border, probably was a significant contributing factor to Pol Pot's demise last night, which is claimed to be through heart disease. His wife told us that he was feeling dizzy and laid down, and he -- she heard him gasp and went over, and when she touched him he was dead. And that was at 10:45 p.m. Cambodian time last night, about 16 hours ago.

STAMBERG: And dead at the age of 73. How would you describe what Pol Pot's legacy is, Mr. Thayer?

THAYER: Well, there's no question that Pol Pot caused unspeakable suffering to millions of people who didn't deserve it.

And there's no question that his death leaves really many unanswered historical questions as well. He went to his grave believing that he had contributed more to his country than the suffering that he inflicted. Pol Pot was considered to be a patriot and a nationalist fighting a historical enemy by those who supported him. And he refused to the end to take responsibility for the terrible, terrible reign of three years in the late 1970s that crippled his country, the effects we still see today.

STAMBERG: Thank you very much, sir.

Nate Thayer of the "Far Eastern Economic Review," speaking with us from the Thai-Cambodian border.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1998 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954

Khmer Rouge wants Pol Pot to face war crime trial.

Khmer Rouge wants Pol Pot to face war crime trial.

Daily Mail (London)

April 15, 1998

LEADERS of the Khmer Rouge want to hand deposed dictator Pol Pot to an international tribunal to stand trial for war crimes against the Cambodian people.

They want to surrender their 73-year-old former leader in exchange for food and medicine, according to the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Executions, forced labour and disease killed up to two million Cambodians from 1975, when Pol Pot's forces captured the capital Phnom Penh, to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge was defeated by invading Vietnamese forces. The Khmer Rouge has been opposing the government army from its jungle camps ever since.

Pol Pot has been held under house arrest close to the Thai border since June last year when he was overthrown in an internal power struggle. There have been calls for him to be brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

General Khem Nuon of the Khmer Rouge reportedly asked reporter Nat Thayer to put him in touch with 'the right people' so a handover could be arranged.

Thayer is said to have suggested they contact the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Magazine says Khmer Rouge leaders wants to surrender Pol Pot

Magazine says Khmer Rouge leaders wants to surrender Pol Pot

AP Online

April 14, 1998

HONG KONG (AP) _ Cambodia's Khmer Rouge officials have told a Hong Kong-based magazine they want to hand their former leader Pol Pot over to an international tribunal.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's army says it has trapped remaining Khmer Rouge forces in the mountains near the Thai border, and is poised to finish them off.

The Far Eastern Economic Review reported in its latest issue that the Khmer Rouge rebels have asked Review correspondent Nate Thayer for advice on how to deliver the notorious Pol Pot to the authorities.

Gen. Khem Nuon reportedly made the request Saturday during an interview with Thayer at the Thai-Cambodian border.

Khmer Rouge forces have held Pol Pot, 73, under house arrest since June, when they ousted him in a bloody internal power struggle.

Thayer interviewed Pol Pot last year after attending a communist-style ``People's Tribunal'' where the rebels denounced the former leader.

Gen. Nuon reportedly said the Khmer Rouge was unable to contact the United Sates or other countries, and asked Thayer to put them in contact with the ``right people.''

Thayer suggested they contact the International Committee of the Red Cross, the report said.

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in 1975 and ruled Cambodia until 1979, presiding over the deaths of an estimated 2 million people. A Vietnamese invasion in 1979 forced the Khmer Rouge to retreat back to the jungle.

There have been calls for Pol Pot to be brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The rebels hope handing Pol Pot to the authorities will bring food, medicine and other international support for the beleaguered Khmer Rouge.

According to Cambodian military sources, the army is currently hammering the Khmer Rouge guerillas near their former mountain stronghold along the Thai border.

Reports indicate Khmer Rouge head Ta Mok and an undetermined number of hard-line guerillas are holed up in the jungle peaks and attempting a last desperate stand.

Most of the government forces are made up of Khmer Rouge defectors, who oppose their former comrades' refusal to strike a peace deal with Phnom Penh.

Some 5,000 defectors are waiting out the fighting 25 miles south of the battle zone. The government said they will send them and their families home when it is safe.

Magazine says Khmer Rouge leaders wants to surrender Pol Pot

Magazine says Khmer Rouge leaders wants to surrender Pol Pot

AP Online

April 14, 1998

1

AP Online
04-14-1998
HONG KONG (AP) _ Cambodia's Khmer Rouge officials have told a Hong Kong-based magazine they want to hand their former leader Pol Pot over to an international tribunal.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's army says it has trapped remaining Khmer Rouge forces in the mountains near the Thai border, and is poised to finish them off.

The Far Eastern Economic Review reported in its latest issue that the Khmer Rouge rebels have asked Review correspondent Nate Thayer for advice on how to deliver the notorious Pol Pot to the authorities.

Gen. Khem Nuon reportedly made the request Saturday during an interview with Thayer at the Thai-Cambodian border.

Khmer Rouge forces have held Pol Pot, 73, under house arrest since June, when they ousted him in a bloody internal power struggle.

Thayer interviewed Pol Pot last year after attending a communist-style ``People's Tribunal'' where the rebels denounced the former leader.

Gen. Nuon reportedly said the Khmer Rouge was unable to contact the United Sates or other countries, and asked Thayer to put them in contact with the ``right people.''

Thayer suggested they contact the International Committee of the Red Cross, the report said.

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in 1975 and ruled Cambodia until 1979, presiding over the deaths of an estimated 2 million people. A Vietnamese invasion in 1979 forced the Khmer Rouge to retreat back to the jungle.

There have been calls for Pol Pot to be brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The rebels hope handing Pol Pot to the authorities will bring food, medicine and other international support for the beleaguered Khmer Rouge.

According to Cambodian military sources, the army is currently hammering the Khmer Rouge guerillas near their former mountain stronghold along the Thai border.

Reports indicate Khmer Rouge head Ta Mok and an undetermined number of hard-line guerillas are holed up in the jungle peaks and attempting a last desperate stand.

Most of the government forces are made up of Khmer Rouge defectors, who oppose their former comrades' refusal to strike a peace deal with Phnom Penh.

Some 5,000 defectors are waiting out the fighting 25 miles south of the battle zone. The government said they will send them and their families home when it is safe.


Copyright 1998 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.

A LIST OF THIS YEAR'S PEABODY AWARD WINNERS.(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT)

Recently viewed: Article: Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

A LIST OF THIS YEAR'S PEABODY AWARD WINNERS.(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT)

Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)

April 3, 1998

Byline: Associated Press

Winners of the 1997 George Foster Peabody Awards:

......``The Trial of Pol Pot,'' ABC News/Nightline, exclusive video by correspondent Nate Thayer in Cambodia with background and context by Ted Koppel and ``Nightline'' staff.